Massive Update Part III

I bought a Wii in April. Some may say I'm a nutter. At the moment it's been worth the money even though it hasn't had as much love as the 360 or PS2.

Up to the point where I put my money down my experience had been limited to a bit of Wii Sports bowling at family gatherings. Brilliant fun, although I'm finding it a little less so on my own. I was warned this would be the case.

A big spend for not much play, you might say, and maybe you're right. But if you saw all my old computers and consoles you'd know I am not the sort of person to bin something the moment everyone else gets bored of it. Hopefully it will come into its own at some point in the future.

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Since April was a rather expensive month for me, games-wise, I have been trying to keep spending to a minimum these last couple of months. And I was doing okay.

May saw me buy three games: Civilization IV Complete from Direct2Drive for £4.95, Shatter for PC via Steam, and Super Mario Galaxy. Compared to previous months May was a rather frugal one.

June was even better: Burnout Paradise Ultimate Box for £4.99 from Steam and a cheapo copy of an old favourite Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 on the PS2. It was all going really well until last Thursday.

Steam was originally Valve Software's way to sell their ace Half-Life and Counterstrike games via download, but over the past 6 or 7 years it has grown into a full-blown store for buying all sorts of games you then download to your PC, and recently for Mac too.

Some games are priced higher than a boxed copy, but Valve have the infuriating knack of doing the best deals, and their current summer sale is no exception.

A combination of timed daily deals and other discounts, as well as me being weak, have seen me snap up a number of games in the last couple of days:

The Witcher Enhanced Edition (£4.78)
Gridrunner Revolution (£2.99)
Painkiller Black Edition (£2.99)
Serious Sam HD First and Second Encounter (£5.50)
Aliens vs Predator 2000 Classic (75p!)

There's no way I'll play all these in the near future, in fact I have a backlog of games from previous Steam sales here - let's hope they don't go under any time soon!

Damn you, Steam! (and my weakness for a bargain)

Massive Update Part II

Continuing my desperate scramble to catch up.

Super Mario Galaxy - my game-buying strategy usually involves waiting for a game to come down in price at which point I'll pick it up, but first-party Nintendo games on the Wii seldom do, unfortunately.

So I had to pick up a second-hand copy of this for £18, but I'll say right now it was worth every penny.

There can't be many people on the planet left who haven't at some point played a Mario game. My first exposure was in 1993 playing Super Mario World on my shiny new Super Nintendo. The sheer quality of the game blew me away, the ingenuity and ideas, the super-slick control. It was pure class.

Seventeen years on and that attention to detail, that quality is present in Super Mario Galaxy. I have this vision of the in-house Nintendo developers in their shirts and ties, all in their cubicles working all hours within a strict management structure, all trying to get that extra bit of class into the game.

If I have any issues they involve the sometimes-akward waggle controls, the shake-to-do-spin-jump was a tad iffy when it mattered. However I have to commend Nintendo on not forcing too much motion control on the player, instead using it for less essential parts of the game like collecting star bits.

As I write this I'm 30 stars in. Apparently the game is complete at 60, but you can go on to get the full 120 if you so feel. Unless it gets grr-inducingly frustrating I will probably be going through the 60 barrier.

Massive Update Part I

It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you ... so I'm going to do a few posts in a desperate bid to catch up.

Monster Hunter Tri: I was inspired to buy this by all the great things my good friend Michelle had to say about the Monster Hunter series on the PSP. After spending 5 hours going through all the tutorials on the PSP I was ready to set forth, but this coincided with the arrival of the Wii one.

For those who don't know Monster Hunter is a Phantasy Star Online-esque action role-playing game involving you hunting dinosaurs, effectively. You go out from the central village on quests, hunt monsters, collect materials to craft weapons and armour, forrage for herbs and the like to make other items. No operatic story, just pure gameplay - just how I like it.

It really is a superb game with lots of depth. It relies on skill rather than stats to get you through encounters, and even the relatively n00b-friendly Wii version is pretty tough to get into. It's the best feeling when a game clicks and you stop fighting the controls and relax into the flow. I'm sort of getting there but it's not quite fully clicked, if that makes sense.

I did take it online a couple of times. It's very similar to PSO in that you can get a party together, choose a quest and go out to your own instanced area and hunt. Great games generally but I was fed up of doing the same missions over and over to get my HR (Hunter Rank) up enough to open more. I was convinced the good people I was playing with were fed up of slaying a Great Jaggi for the 7th time that session, and that did rather take the enjoyment away for me.

Why am I not playing it now? Good question. I know others for whome the games have really got their monster claws into them, but I wasn't feeling that pull, and I can't really put my finger on why. I'm not done with the game, writing about it here is making me reflect and want to fire it up again. Maybe I just don't have that addictive personality I had a decade or so ago where I'd easily spend 8 hours straight playing games or making music.

Sorry, Dodge

Okay, 2010 is moving along at whatever speed relativity sees fit, and games are being played. My aim is to actually complete the damn things, something I've singularly managed to not do these past few years. So with this new single-minded spirit I've been giving Final Fantasy XIII a good going-over.

I have to say Final Fantasy XII is probably my mumber one PS2 game. Forget what the "it's not as good as VII" people say, taken as a game in its own right Final Fantasy XII is superb. It looks good, the battle system is brilliant, the Gambit and LIcense systems are deep and satisfying. Okay so the story is basically Star Wars, and the politics is a bit confusing, and a couple of the characters are not particularly engaging, but generally the game is a joy to play.

I really need to get back to it. I put a good 51 hours in so far.

So I was very much looking forward to XIII, surely they couldn't mess this up?

I'm 24 hours in and I am sorry to say it really isn't as engaging or enjoyable as XII. It is very linear, which frankly defeats the object of "adventure", not only in the story but the character development. Okay so you can assign points to improve characters' attributes in each of the 6 classes, but it's clear that they expect you to be at certain levels at certain points in the game, there are glass cielings in that regard.

The battle system is a step back, using an Active Time Bar-type affair, but because you only control one character you don't really feel as involved. You can change the Paradigm (combination of character classes) but it's just a bit too 'global' for my taste.

What cannot be faulted are the production values. The cutscenes are generally breathtaking, and everything is generally slick and gorgeous. Sasz is a really likeable character, and whoever does his voice acting deserves a medal.

It's not an awful game by any stretch of the imagination, but it really isn't grabbing me like its predecessor. A vital part of any RPG is managing your party, developing characters, and here it feels as though most of that is hard-wired into the game, which rather takes away from the overall experience.

PS: i'm reliablyinformed it's not Dodge but Dahj, or something like that. Fantasy names eh.

No Excuses, Mo Remorse

Not updated this in a while ... played some games ... real life ... not feeling it ... all the usual stuff I start a post here with, and now onto the games:

Bayonetta - I liked the look of this, totally over-the-top action, sexy lead character, what's not to like? Generally enjoyable yet I don't think I was playing it right. It took me just over 35 hours to complete which included going back to early parts of the game to make more money in order to buy items. Some parts had me tearing my hair out, but the ending was suitably satisfying - and the dance video at the end was well worth it! Your inept correspondent made things difficult for himself, I wouldn't blame the devs.

Burnout Dominator - it may be just a budget racer with the Burnout name on it, but it does what you want: fast exciting arcade racing with no pretentions. It's currently my Saturday night game of choice and is surprisingly playable after a couple of ciders.

Mass Effect - you cannot move for talk of Mass Effect 2 at the moment. Friends, podcasts, forums, it's almost impossible to avoid the major love for the game. "But you have to play Mass Effect first!" they all say before spoiling he sequel silly. So I bought a copy during the Steam sale, spent a week downloading 10gigabytes of game only to find the poxy thing didn't work. A trip to Amazon Marketplace got me a 360 copy to play, and I duly started a new game. It looks superb, lovely shiny 70s/80s SF setting, it really appealed and was good to see after all the Middle Earth rip-offing. The combat was lacklustre and frustrating although after knocking it down to Easy (which is a bit too easy) things progressed faster. The story seems okay thusfar. I'm told all the faults of Mass Effect are sorted in the sequel - they'd better be!

That's it really, other than more Quake Live (getting worse at it for some reason) and Team Fortress 2 (ditto, but it's still fun).

More next time.

You're Not Alexander!

Okay, no I've not been on holiday, and yes I have played games:

God Hand - what a superb game this is! It's essentially a Streets Of Rage-style brawler but in 3D. Silly sense of humour, daft plot involving some fella who has a special arm. Graphics are a bit ropey but the deep, involving gameplay more than makes up for it. It's one of those games where, when you fail, you know you can do better next time.

It was the last game from developer Clover Studio who also did Okami amongst other things. It's a shame they had to go.

Borderlands - still a superb game but I was flagging. I'd recommend people play it in co-op as the single-player is a bit ofa grind after a while.

A Trip Through The Borderlands

This last week or so I've mainly been playing Borderlands, a sort of post-apocalyptic FPS RPG with definite nods to Phantasy Star Online (although I know some people will beg to differ).

Verdict: surprisingly good.

You basically go about doing quests, gaining experience, levelling up, picking up loot, all the stuff you'd expect to be doing in a game like this, except it's a first-person shooter. Now regular readers will know how bloody useless I am at FPSs, but this one isn't too bad as far as difficulty goes. For a while I was really dominating the opposition until I discovered aim assist was on by default, but I turned it off and it got better, much better.

The devs claim there are thousands of guns in this game, basically they all have varying stats and effects (and often puke-inducing colours) and it's great when you come across a new more powerful weapon to try out.

The drawbacks? The menu system is rather akward, it takes ages to get at inventory items and they're not organised in a logical way, plus you have to press a button to compare the relative merits of new equipment which just makes things even more akward.

I had the pleasure of playing with a couple of people in co-op and it was very entertaining. Depending on the levels of the players and who is hosting it alters the enemy levels accordingly, so it is possible for lower-level players to speed-level as long as the other players are able to keep them alive - this is where good teamwork comes into play.

Generally it's a good game, lots to do, although the environment do become rather drab and repetitive after a while.

I need to step away from it for a short while as I've played nothing else all week and it's in danger of becoming a bit played-out, but rest assured I'll be striving to get to the end of at least one playthrough, despite my ineptitude!