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.