Sunday, December 7, 2008
Mirror’s Edge
Today I managed to get through Chapters 4 and 5 in Mirror’s Edge. Neither of these chapters felt particularly hard, although they did serve to advance the storyline a bit. Although the climax in Chapter 4 was meeting up with Ropeburn and then watching him get assassinated, the real highlight was the long getaway sequence underground in the subway system.

In Chapter 5 it’s clear I’m chasing whomever Ropeburn was supposed to be meeting with before he was killed. Not sure who it is yet, but they’ve got some heavy support as chasing them took me right into one of the more overwhelming firefights I’ve yet encountered. I keep thinking I can get to the point where I can sprint for 30 seconds and get the “Vrooom!” achievement, but I never do. Seems pretty difficult, at least at my skill level.

Guitar Hero World Tour
Started up the game to do another one of the three song sets. Although it’s not really, I could see being forced into multiple song sets from the get go could be somewhat frustrating or annoying. I don’t mind it, but I do enjoy the option of being able to select individual songs in a particular venue or genre.

I’ve only been playing guitar tracks and by myself so far though. I should probably make the effort to not play this alone sometime.

Q.E.D.

Sunday, November 30, 2008
Gears of War 2
*** Warning — Spoilers! ***
DMoTsunami and I made some progress, getting up through Act 4, Chapter 3, in today’s session — not a whole lot of progress, but a respectable amount and we’re certainly getting closer to the end. Even when sometimes it’s total overkill with detail work, I’ve been enjoying the scale and aesthetic of the environments so far. Visuals is something the Gears of War series is known for and it still feels that way. Obviously it’s probably a lot of fun (and work) when you’re working in this highly stylized fictional environment. We also finally made it to perhaps the second most central plot point in the game — beyond eradicating the Horde, saving humanity and saving Jacinto — the one where Dom finally gets closure in his search for Maria.

This is another point in the game’s story where the theme is serious and adult, similar to Tai’s suicide earlier in the game. Clearly are both events not only serious in nature, but they are supposed to evoke emotional responses. Tai’s suicide was sudden and quite unexpected — we’ve been conditioned to think that Cogs, and all other manner of testosterone fuelled space marines, are virtually indestructible and not prone to weakness of body or spirit. While I didn’t shed any tears at the situation, this was a clever subversion of trope we’ve all come conditioned to accept without reason or questioning, in this genre and especially in the Gears of War franchise. A fact not so subtly illustrated by Ben Carmine saying “he survives everything. Doesn’t he?” Beating the dead horse somewhat, but that’s just a pretty subjective opinion on how overt you need to have points hit home. Of course, the ironic counterpoint is that the Carmine family has done anything but survive in the Gears of War games — although that’s a tragedy of a different nature.

Moving on, however, to Maria. Dom’s search for Maria has not only been one of the key plot points for the game as it progresses forward, but it was an integral part of the marketing machine both to pique interest and presumably also to silence naysayers that Gears of War didn’t have a story. During this part of my playthrough, that thread of the story comes to its conclusion as Dom finally finds Maria amongst the enslaved. Even though you think Dom has found resolution in his quest, the writers throw in a twist in an attempt to ratchet up the emotional intensity yet again. In this case, we saw Maria through Dom’s eyes and he was seeing her as he remembered her and it wasn’t until a cue from Marcus did Dom see that Maria had been entirely “processed” for lack of a better word, and was basically not even human anymore. As a result, as Marcus turns away, Dom does the compassionate thing and ends Maria’s life (off screen). The scene is certainly positioned to be a turning point for Dom, perhaps launching him into a different state of mind as you follow him and Marcus through the end of the game, presumably looking for vengeance.

Unfortunately, the scene just didn’t resonate with me the way I suspect the writers intended it to. I have to give them a bunch of credit for trying to tackle exponentially more complex mature themes in their game, I just think in many ways, the overly macho slaughterfest of a game makes it difficult to wholeheartedly believe these displays of emotion. Really, the precedent was set with the first Gears of War, so you can’t really expect much as the writers try to move the game out of the hole it’s already dug itself with regards to story and emotional connection. The more I think about it, while it may not have worked with the overall story or universe, I would have preferred Dom and Maria get reunited here — save the tragedy for the third game/act, once we’re had more time to feel elated about their reunion and therefore having time to build the emotional connection needed to respond to the tragedy of loss.

Or something.

Thursday, December 4, 2008
Mirror’s Edge
I still haven’t had enough time to dedicate to playing through Mirror’s Edge, as much as I know I want to. I just completed Chapter 1, which isn’t much. The story is just getting started and we’ve gotten foundation on which I’m sure the rest of the story is going to be built around. That is the conspiracy surrounding the death of this Robert Pope and the framing of Faith’s sister. We’re already seeing how some of this is going to play out — the duality of sisters at opposite ends from each other, Faith the one on the fringes, breaking the law and her sister Kate, a cop, on the side of the “enemy” by virtue of employment. It’ll be interesting to see how the story may or may not exploit this to provide insight into how the gameplay mechanics are they way they are.

Beyond that, I still haven’t fully gotten a hang of the controls yet, but I’m picking it up quickly. I’d really like to get to the point where I could be a bit more fluid with Faith’s movements as I try to navigate and evade in the world. I guess that part is all about practice, practice, practice.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
I played a couple of matches of this to try it out since it was just released. I’m barely competent at fighting games, but I still find them quite fun and this is no exception. I really need to read up on the move list and what not of what makes this “Super” because without it, because I didn’t quite get to anything that felt radically different just by fooling around with it. That being said, when I played, it still felt satisfying. Will have to play some more after I pore over, but not memorize, the move list.

Soulcalibur IV
I picked this up again, mostly to check out the character customization features. This is way deeper than I anticipated, although I should have guessed given the detail some people have managed to pack into created characters. Crazy.

Friday, December 5, 2008
Gears of War 2
Well, DMoTsunami and I completed Gears of War 2 tonight. There were definitely some highs and lows as we rushed to the end of the game. Skorge is one tough dude and it was a shame that the way to finally dispatch him was through a reaver fight, but you have to say, flying around on reavers was pretty fun. It was nice to turn the tables and ride a Brumak and decimate a ton of Locust as you gave them a taste of their own medicine. It was also a way to see the upgrades to the Unreal Engine since by having a camera that was pulled out farther than the normal third-person view, they were able to render many, many Locust swarming around trying to take you down. It definitely felt… empowering. Unfortunately the end was a little anticlimatic, although it was an improvement over the ending boss battle from the first Gears of War. Don’t get me wrong, that was a pretty tense fight even on Hardcore, but you felt like you wanted something bigger and seemingly overwhelming to fight at the end. I think this was part of the reason a Brumak fight was included in the PC version of Gears of War, along with the fact that you just never got to fight one of them.

Anyhow, riding in a helicopter and nearly indiscriminately using the Hammer of Dawn on the lambent brumak just felt slightly underwhelming when you look back at the other staged fights you had. I just didn’t get the same sense of tension and anxiety, but, it still felt pretty rewarding to take it down in the end. I think part of what happened is that you’re just thrown into this situation where you have to take the brumak down that you’re just reacting and, at least on hardcore co-op, it didn’t really provide for the adrenaline to kick in. Still, it’s a step in the right direction and finishing the game felt both satisfying and got me pumped to play some more — on Insane. Especially since I never unlocked the “Friends with Benefits” achievement even though, as best as I can recall, DMoTsunami and I played through every bit of the game together. So, I definitely need to get that.

Saturday, December 6, 2008
Mirror’s Edge
I completed Chapter 2 of Mirror’s Edge in this sitting. I’m feeling a bit better with flowing between running and doing all the parkour moves, but I still don’t have it so well that I can string a good segment without running into something and stopping me in my tracks. In this chapter, I’m running after someone from Faith’s past, trying to catch up to him to get more insight into the conspiracy surrounding Pope and my sister. It’s pretty clear this guy is going to figure fairly significantly later on in the game, just based on how much the cut scene dialogue decides to keep Jackknife’s history a mystery. Speaking of cut scenes, it’s beginning to bother me a little how much the animated cut scenes are breaking from the immersion provided by the rest of the game, no matter how cool the animated style is. We’ll see how it feels as I progress through the game.

In Chapter 3, which I also completed, we first meet Lieutenant Miller. Again, given what you know, he seems to fall into a pretty stereotypical insider helper person who will eventually be forced to stick with what his job is, rather than betray the system, no matter how much he helps you. Beyond that, this was probably the most visceral chapter I’ve encountered so far — DICE really piled on a ton of action back-to-back here. It’s not just even jumping between the large cranes, even though that’s a moment where you’re not sure if you’re going to make it. There’s a part where I got stuck a little, on a rooftop where three guards were dropped off by helicopter and, if you didn’t get it just right or rushed, you’d be killed pretty quick. This was the first time where I felt I would try to do the disarm move every time, as that was the quickest way to dispatch the guards. After much trial and error, I pretty much got it perfect and it felt pretty good to get it down like that.

The real achievement in this chapter, in terms of getting you all wrapped up in the action, was the portion where you’re running through all the scaffolding while the helicopter is firing at you. I liked how the intensity was at a high through this entire sequence, so much so that when you encountered the lone officer at a corner of the building, that you could only react by instinct and attack and basically push him off the scaffolding to fall to his death. That was, in a word, just a brilliant piece of pacing because you couldn’t get the feeling of anticipation that was going to happen, it just happened and afterwards I could only think, “Did I just do that? Wow.”

Q.E.D.

[S-L-O-W-L-Y catching up on my backlog of gaming log entries. Rest assured, I played something nearly every week, I just got backed up writing about them.]

Monday, November 24, 2008
Guitar Hero World Tour
A good friend dropped off a copy of Guitar Hero World Tour (the guitar pack) for me, so of course I had to try it out. I spent most of my time checking out the depth of the “Rock Star Creator” customization Neversoft put into the game. Although I prefer somewhat edgier, more hip — dare I say somewhat indie rock — aesthetic in Rock Band to the design choices Guitar Hero makes, I was quite impressed with how far the customization went. The character creation is somewhat limited and the band logos were done in the same way as Rock Band (layering art, shapes and text), however without a restrictive guitar license, it allowed Neversoft to allow players to customize their instruments to quite a deep level. Ok, at least their guitars as I haven’t checked out the bass, drum or mic customization.

Impatient as ever, I had to go check out the game play. I only played the first two songs, which really was two songs plus an encore because I forgot that is what the Guitar Hero franchise does. I picked the Sweden playlist with “Beautiful Disaster,” “Obstacle 1″ and “The One I Love” as the encore. I don’t think any of the songs had one of the sections where the notes where strung together so I could use the touch sensitive pad on the guitar controller neck, so I didn’t get to see how that worked. I quit after that, but I’ll be back to finish the game off over time.

Friday, November 28, 2008
Soulcalibur IV
Although I had jumped at the chance to snag Soulcalibur IV from an Amazon Gold Box deal this week, it hadn’t arrived in my possession by the time it was loaded up at a day-long post-Thanksgiving occasion. I had to try it out. Of course, playing in a group situation meant I wouldn’t get a chance to go over the character customization features, but I’ve seen just how involved it can get. Either way, I guess this was a preview of sorts… once we actually got an extra controller so two of us could square off.

I’m really no good at fighting games. Really no good. I don’t know if I’m just not patient enough to learn the timing or I don’t really spend too much time memorizing the moves, but I’m probably just a hair above the average button masher. Actually, I would try to learn the moves, but having sat through the command list in Dead or Alive trying to learn some of the moves, I realized I’m hopeless at really remembering most of the moves without some real focus. This isn’t Street Fighter II Turbo, where it seemed just a little bit easier to remember them for me. Maybe it was just because I was young and now I’m old and senile.

I’ve also never played a game in the Soulcalibur series before either, so weapon based fighting is somewhat new to me, but it sure was fun.

Saturday, November 29, 2008
Gears of War 2
The other game DMoTsunami and I have played through in co-op between us was Gears of War. That means we just had to get together to play through Gears of War 2 in co-op as well. Unfortunately DMoTsunami was a little impatient with me and finished the campaign the first weekend after he bought the game, leaving me in the dust. We managed to set aside quite a bit of time and made some righteous progress in the game, making it up to Act 4 tonight, completing “Tip of the Spear,” “Denizens” and “Gathering Storm.”

Initially, I wasn’t impressed by Gears of War 2, I’m not sure if I was just expecting a greater leap in graphics and gameplay based on the GDC 2008 presentation or maybe it was something else. I’m definitely not prejudiced against the game, so there had to be some reason. Unfortunately I never figured out what it was that gave me this initial impression. As I kept playing through the game I was impressed by little things here and there — the entire scope of the game, trying to imbue a sense of purpose and solid narrative to the game.

So far I’ve been paying close attention to how linear the campaign may feel, given that the environments are pretty narrow and the story is pretty linear. I’ve been impressed that, to me, it doesn’t feel as claustrophobic as it could be. I haven’t really gotten a sense where I’m just being pulled through each level and environment, even though there is no room to explore or anything. I would’t expect there to be, this isn’t a sandbox game, but if you really look at the level design, there are a lot of choices on where to position yourself, but you’re essentially in a space that ranges from maybe 20 meters to 50 meters wide at most.

The co-op campaign has been fun, a little improved over Gears of War so far based on how you do have to work together more when the paths split you up, rather than just splitting you up for a different type of fight or perspective over the combat. It’s good, but the game doesn’t force you to do quite as much teamwork in an action oriented way as it seems Resident Evil 5 may be trying to do based on the gameplay footage I’ve seen. We’ll have to see when that releases to know for sure. Also, while I haven’t finished it, there’s aspects of Army of Two like the aggro system that seem to feel like a more integrated portion of core gameplay as well.

Hopefully I can finish Gears of War 2 soon, it’s definitely been fun to play so far and game length hasn’t seemed much of a problem despite how for we got in one day.

Mirror’s Edge

I’ve been looking forward to playing Mirror’s Edge since I tried the demo way back on November 1 — the combination of fast paced running and platforming, along with a pacifist subtext to the game and combat really piqued my interest and I wanted to see how well DICE managed to combine all of these ambitious elements and pull off a compelling game.

That being said, my exuberance to play the game didn’t match the amount of time I had available to really get started and all I managed to complete was the tutorial and prologue. Not much of a start and much of it was just a rehash of the demo, but I shall focus my time on working through Mirror’s Edge real soon.

Q.E.D.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Halo 3
DMoTsunami and I met up again to continue plowing through the Halo 3 campaign, still on Legendary of course. We’ve moved along in the story and now we’re surrounded by the Flood as we try to get, well, rescue Cortana. I hate the Flood. I think that goes without saying and I’m probably not alone. This chapter took us a while to complete as we often found ourselves a little too outnumbered and outgunned for our strategy, or lack thereof. We still managed to get through almost all of it fairly uneventfully until we hit that dreaded player disconnect issue that completely prevents us from getting the chapter listed as completed and the achievement for the level.

LE SIGH.

This disconnect issue means that DMoTsunami and I will be replaying yet another level in its entirety yet again.

Animal Crossing: City Folk
I know I shouldn’t have. I know it would be a recipe for disaster. As I stated just a couple of weeks ago, this series should really just be renamed the Tom Nook Mortgage Simulator. Kind of feels like real life, being stuck in debt nearly forever. However, I booted it up just the same. Well, after updating my Wii firmware and downloading the Wii Speak channel which will likely not get that much use, but hopefully I’ll get to try it sometime.

Having read nothing about Animal Crossing: City Folk, I was surprised to find that I could essentially import my character on the Nintendo DS version of Animal Crossing: Wild World. After downloading a small application onto my DS via ad hoc WiFi and a short wait, my character, arne, appeared in my new, Wii-based town, turnip. Essentially it seems your name and your general appearance–that is, your face–are transferred over so you don’t have to select that anew. I might just keep him and his cute Animal Crossing face rather than go into town to get a Mii makeover.

Alas, the wonder of a new game didn’t last that long as already, I was thrust into finding myself a suitable house that Tom Nook would be overjoyed to sell to me, no doubt in return for some small favors and eventually just explicit payment of Bells.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Animal Crossing: City Folk
Oh how tedious Animal Crossing can be when you’re trying to accomplish a particular goal. I just want to get my friend code so I can open my gates and take advantage of the internet connectivity of the game with a bunch of people on a mailing list I’m on. I’m still running the first sequence of tasks for Tom Nook so I can’t do that yet and apparently my application still hasn’t cleared.

Thanks for the info, Copper! Grrr….

Friday, November 21, 2008
Grand Theft Auto IV
I start up this game in an attempt to try to get a quick mission off with Dwayne or Patrick McReary, but Roman decides to be his usual bumbling self and interrupt me when I want to be focused on a mission. Not only that, but the joker just wants to go play some darts. I’ve blown off my buddy a couple times recently, so guilty conscience concedes and I go play some darts with Roman. Thankfully, I’m good at darts and the game is over on my third set of throws. Of course, I have to drive Roman back home and that pretty much takes up all the time I had set aside at the moment.

Saturday, November 22, 2008
Braid
I’m still missing one piece from World 2 on this, so I found out as I entered the game after a long hiatus. Instead of trying to figure it out, I just continued trying to plow through the Worlds for now. I’m up to World 6, even though Worlds 3 through 5 have no more than two or three puzzle pieces each. I do like how each World provides a new piece to the gameplay mechanics that you have to wrap your head around to fully understand how to complete all the levels and puzzle pieces.

To be fair, I still haven’t fully grasped all that the ring can do, beyond slow down time with some limitations. I got the first puzzle piece in World 6 and the nothing else before I quit. Which was not that much longer anyway.

I have a feeling that this game is going to frustrate me to no end before I complete it, but at least at that point then I’ll be able to refocus back on the celebrated story to be found within Braid.

Q.E.D.

Sunday, November 9, 2008
Halo 3
In my continuing effort to clear the campaign on Legendary with my co-op buddy, DMoTsunami, we tackled another level tonight, The Covenant. Overall this felt like a fairly short level, but let me tell you, it was quite satisfying pummeling the Scarabs with my Scorpion tank from afar while DMoTsunami kept them busy in his hornet. I managed to down one from a well placed cannon shot. Then the rest was just typical run and gun through the level to the end and then back out again.

We tried to jump through the rings for the IWHBYD skull and I think we messed it up so we would have to do the whole thing over again, but didn’t realize. So we restarted from the last checkpoint which I think compounded the problem even more so. All in all, I think I wasted about 45 minutes of our time trying to get the skull before we gave up. I’ll do it later, although I heard that DMoTsunami went back and started the level from the mission start on Normal and got it for himself.

Bastard.

Q.E.D.

[Only a week late right? Apologies, work has kept me incredibly busy to finish this post off. That's a good thing though!]

Friday, November 7, 2008
Rock Band 2
Played a good number of songs in Band World Tour with my mom, more or less trying out how portable my game profile is. I took my profile and save game with me. On a different Xbox 360 I could login and either use the local saved band or my band. We chose my parent’s band, the Sir Mondays, and I hit the drums. I’m definitely out of practice as I couldn’t do any songs on the hard difficulty setting, only on medium. We completed a bunch of new songs unlocking a few venues that were previously locked up for their Band World Tour. It was fun and I was glad my profile and save game had that level of portability — something I suspect wasn’t the case in the original Rock Band when bands and characters were less interchangeable.

Gears of War 2
Of course, like a kid at Christmas I couldn’t wait to give this a try when it arrived in the mail and was in my hands. Even though I know how to play the game, I chose the tutorial route with Benjamin Carmine rather than skipping it. Then I just completed the first chapter in Act 1, defending and clearing out a hospital of Locust. Then, in a quite boring decision, I moved over to try out the Horde mode by myself. I had played this mode during the Gears of War 2 event at E3 and loved it. The attraction and challenge to it is still there, even though I couldn’t last past wave 2 no matter how hard I tried.

Bangai-O Spirits
I’ve had this sitting around for a long while, but since I don’t regularly commute, my handheld gaming time is next to nil. I basically have to force myself to play something on a handheld, and it usually works when I think about it since I have been playing through Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 DUO with some semblance of regularity.

Having never owned a Dreamcast, I’ve never played the original Bangai-O. However, many positive impressions around the Web, general gameplay mechanics which I like (side scrolling shooter) and then one of our designers at work had his own downloadable level featured in IGN’s “Bangai-O Spirits Elite Design Contest” all sealed the deal for me. As I advanced through the tutorial levels, I really liked what the game was trying to do overall and with the ability to select and mix your different kinds of weapons. Unfortunately I got stuck at the last tutorial level and all my attempts were fruitless, so I shelved the game until I could approach it with a fresh mind.

Saturday, November 8, 2008
Bangai-O Spirits
Ah yes, I returned to this fiendishly difficult (for me, anyway) game. After many, many attempts at clearing the last tutorial level by brute force, I managed the clear the stage. I’m sure there was a more elegant way of finishing it, but I couldn’t come to discover it. After completing the tutorial I was left with a nearly immeasurable number of levels that don’t provide any story progression. Although I assume they do provide some progression of difficulty, or else I would be screwed. I still found the game difficult but I was having fun trying to get through the limited number of levels I cleared before I had to get off the train.

One thing: the baseball bat rules.

Grand Theft Auto IV
Unfortunately, I haven’t a clue on many details of what I did during this session, but I know I progressed a few missions. I’m also pretty certain I took Kate McReary out for a date and, of course, since we were “just friends” she didn’t take too kindly at my attempt to make an advance on her at the end of the date. I still got the thumbs up that it was a good date, so I guess she liked playing pool. Beyond that I only remember going after a lawyer who was putting the screws on Francis McReary about something or other, so I had to go into the law offices for an interview and the first few times the game said I was dressed incorrectly. I couldn’t understand because I was wearing a suit (several different ones) and nice shoes! It turns out I kept forgetting that I left sunglasses on Niko and that wouldn’t be acceptable… no, no. So finally, during the fourth or fifth time, I finally got to do the interview and then shot my way out of the law offices. This was pretty easy compared to some of the tougher earlier missions I had to shoot my way out of.

Gears of War 2
As soon as I loaded up Gears of War 2 I got invited to play the Horde mode from some current and former work-related friends. I don’t think we ever got past wave 4, but we were having a great time trying to discover the strategies that worked for each wave even when we felt we had a good grasp of the map. The flamethrower is fun, I can tell you that. A pretty cool addition even though a little nerve-wracking when you would be trying to down a Butcher with one and it would still keep coming at you, seemingly unfazed. Even though I had mastered the art of the active reload pretty quickly, I still did far too little damage when compared to my more able teammates. That will change next time, definitely next time.

Q.E.D.

Thursday, October 30, 2008
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 DUO
I’m trying to get to the next witch touching segment with Sofi, friend of lions. That means I’m back to finding clues, which is perhaps the more frustrating mechanic of the game. It’s not quite as simple or linear as Phoenix Wright in this regard, although the overall design is the same–you have different locations you can visit and you have to touch around the screen to trigger explanatory text or find a clue. Even though this game is pretty much intended for one purpose whatsoever–looking at and touching suspected witches in inappropriate areas–I can’t help just how heavy-handed the expository moments are. It makes the game less engaging and the characters less personable, ending up in a game where you’re really just exploring listlessly focused on getting to touching witches as quickly as possible. It’s really a bit of a missed opportunity and I don’t think it’s all that much more difficult to integrate story advancement into the actions within the story the player is forced to make. Ah well.

Saturday, November 1, 2008
Grand Theft Auto IV
I can’t believe my game progress is only at 34.65% complete. I have entered a bit of artificially-induced impatience with the game, as I want to complete the story yet I’m wanting to not fall behind on the deluge of compelling content that has and will be released in the next two months. This means I’ve just gotten a bit annoyed at being called up by my friends for social outings. I know I can mute my phone so I won’t receive these requests, ostensibly not causing their like and respect percentages to go down, but I think that kind of ruins the integrity of that game mechanic that Rockstar intended to have. So in the end I had to deny Little Jacob because I was on a mission and Roman because I was feeling apathetic to take him out to play pool after I already took out him for a round of bowling. However, there was a call from Brucie which introduced the speedboat as we took a couple of girls out to the Poop Deck. Hurr hurr.

After I wasted time doing this, I went out to the question mark mission marker and found out it was none only than Deputy Commissioner Francis McReary and I did his first mission, which was the oft-mentioned in previews mission of where I had to find the guy who answered his cell phone to kill him. It would have been a bit more interesting if I could have used the binoculars to look at all the passersby rather than just walking around until I heard or saw the guy talking on his phone to me. I finally found out that Michelle is a goverment agent, as was so beating-me-over-the-head strongly alluded to earlier in the game. Although given that it seemed and was obvious she was just being nice to me to get close to me, her revelation really came out like she was sorry to have deceived me. It felt weird… maybe if she was more convincing being into my, uh, “talking sessions” I would have found this telegraphed twist more convincing. I did a couple more missions, one for Playboy X and one for Patrick McReary, and have found that the gunfights have increased in difficulty quite a bit forcing me to both take cover and approach the scenario a bit more tactically.

I also spent some time driving around Liberty City to find some new locations, like the Split Sides Comedy Club, or visit new locations ones that have opened up on my map now that I can travel to Algonquin. I decided to stop by Perseus and get some new clothes. I look swank in the new grey suit and new shoes I purchased, along with my existing aviator style glasses. The salesperson at Perseus totally sounded like Agador from The Birdcage. Unfortunately he doesn’t work hard for the money.

Mirror’s Edge demo
This was a highly anticipated demo of mine. This game is a pretty interesting beast. The first person perspective is familiar and feels a lot like any other well done FPS, but in those you’re also usually not doing fairly accurate jumps and manueuvers. Much like car racing games, you have to start getting learning how to judge distances in the game since it’s not directly analogous to real life. The controls also require a new lexicon since you’ll be stringing along certain combos of buttons to be fully effective later on. I’ll definitely be playing the tutorial several times just to get used to the controls and the game. Although I don’t think the game will be so unforgiving at the start to make it frustrating and the restart points are pretty conveniently placed in the tutorial mission in the demo. But it does feel like the game will have quite a steeper learning curve than most other games.

Oh boy this is late. This was a tough week to keep up on entries.
Now, on with it…

Monday, October 20, 2008
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 DUO
I’m not going to say very much about this right now as this is a game I will bring up during my XABY Radio podcast and discuss at length. I will say that it took quite a while to really get anywhere in the game, so it’s a slow starter. If you’ve picked this up, “give it a while” I suppose is the best advice.

Thursday, October 23, 2008
Portal: Still Alive
This was my Unidentified Secret Game A from the week of August 24 and boy does it still kick ass. I’m pacing myself a little as it’s really tempting to blow through it and then blow through all the challenges. Not that it would be excessively short for me–I got stuck several times for a couple hours in two different levels in the retail Portal–but more that I want to savor the experience. So far, this sort of expansion has maintained the magic of the original. To be fair I haven’t really noticed if there was the same sort of hype and it seems like it’s a little bit on the lacking side. It could be due to a digital download versus a retail copy, but it’s most likely that there doesn’t seem to really be a storyline which is what engendered everyone so much to the original.

Call of Duty: World at War beta
It’s very intriguing that I keep coming back to play this and I think I’ve either come close to or surpassed my multiplayer time in this beta when compared to the full retail release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. It’s even more curious to me considering that the multiplayer gameplay between the two games do not differ all that much at the foundation. I’ve found that this game so far has really been a struggle to survive long enough for a recon plane, much less calling in an artillery strike or the dogs. People around me do it, but I haven’t a clue how they can. For me (and some others) this multiplayer beta is “spawn-shoot-die-spawn-kill-shoot-die-spawn-shoot-explosion-die” or something approximating that.

I also played some Team Deathmatch on hardcore tonight and this was my first time with this type of playlist. I’m sure most of you know, but this is the game type that is basically boils down to Team Deathmatch without a HUD or radar. For me, this was almost frustratingly difficult to be fun for me as a gametype, but I can definitely see the appeal.

Regardless, I already know that I’ll be picking this title up to add to my holiday backlog.

My Japanese Coach
I picked this up in hopes that maybe, somewhere along the line, it’s going to help someone like me who knows one step above nothing learn some useful Japanese language and reading skills. I’m not expecting to get much out of this rather than a foundation that I can build off of via professional instruction, classes or textbooks. My Japanese Coach has been in the center of some minor polarized debates on message boards and on a mailing list I am on. There’s no doubt that this game isn’t for those people who are well-versed in the language already–as evidenced by the ceiling on how far into the lessons the non-game will let you start at (lesson 11) after taking their “placement test.” Others have criticized the game for using romaji at the beginning rather than throwing everyone into learning kana from the outset. I can see the reasoning behind that approach and it’s pretty solid, but as long as the software progresses from romaji and doesn’t let you return to it as a crutch, I think it can be overlooked.

I did the first few lessons, even though the placement test put me into the third lesson (colors). The use of romaji is somewhat ridiculous during some of the early lessons. A prime example occurs when the software asks you to match an english word to the Japanese equivalent and you get a word like “samurai” or “anime” which is spelled identically in English and romaji. I’ve only advanced as far as the colors, but already some interesting concepts to Japanese grammar are coming up and I’m really enjoying discovering the challenge of these new concepts.

Friday, October 24, 2008
Call of Duty: World at War beta
I hopped back on for a few more quick games just to increase my rank. I am sort of reaching a little bit of my limit with the multiplayer game at the moment. Not because I don’t want to increase in rank and not because I don’t want to have fun. More than anything it’s just a case of “I should wait for the retail game to come out.” Regardless, this beta has easily replaced anything else on my gaming shelf as the first choice for a quick pick-up-and-play session. I can attribute a good portion of that to the fact that it lives under my “Games Library” section as a digital download, because I don’t perceive Call of Duty: Modern Warfare the same way, even though the multiplayer was just as fun and addictive. I sound supremely lazy, but the effort required to replace the disc for a 10 minute session of neutralizing my adversaries seems too much. That just sounds ridiculous though, so I should just deal with it.

Saturday, October 25, 2008
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 DUO
FINALLY. I was able to touch a witch. After continuing frustrations, again all of which will be detailed in an upcoming podcast, the opportunity to subdue a witch presented itself. After a brief and currently too easy magic fighting mini-game, I was brought to the witch mark investigation screen. Well, that was definitely an interesting experience but not without it’s difficulties. I labored to find the witch mark, but that finally happened.

Now I’m back into investigating about the next suspected witch–a rather matronly looking girl with a lion. Wait, what? Yes, a girl with a lion for a pet at a middle school. Oh my.

Q.E.D.

Sunday, October 12, 2008
Halo 3
I met up with DMoTsunami online again to continue our co-op campaign. We completed The Ark, Floodgate and part of The Covenant. Why part? That dreaded disconnect thing again. It’s gotten a little frustrating especially since neither of us has terrible connections or have had problems in other games.

Oh god, why more Flood? I knew this was gonna happen but I wasn’t looking forward to it. This also means that somehow, in the past year, I’ve managed to avoid any and all spoilers about the game. Ignorance is bliss.

NHL 09
I took on Denogginizer OS on a game fraught with tri-state area rivalry as he took the New Jersey Devils against my New York Rangers in an online match. He beat me 4 – 1 in a pretty good game where I drew first blood and then he just kept putting them in the net including a beautiful wrap-around goal. DenogginizerOS is pretty agressive and tenacious on the ice–I’d watch out for him.

Here are the game stats, courtesy of the functionality EA implemented where you can receive stats for your games via e-mail:

Stats              Away                Home
==========================================================
Team               New York Rangers®   New Jersey Devils®
Score              1                   4
Shots              12                  29
Hits               20                  34
Penalty Minutes    02:00               06:00
Power Play Goals   0                   0
Power Play Opport. 2                   1
Faceoffs Won       5                   18
Breakaways         0/0                 0/1
One Timers         0/3                 0/8
Passing            80/100              84/113
Penalty Shots      0/0                 0/0
Blocked Shots      3                   3

Wednesday, October 15, 2008
NHL 09
After I grabbed some slider settings from OperationSports, I hit up “Be a Pro” mode. I was warned that this was digital crack of MMO proportions, but I couldn’t stay away anyway. Of course I picked to be a NY Ranger, so I am now on the Hartford Wolfpack, their AHL affiliate team.

I scored my first rookie goal in my debut game against the Iowa Chops. What kind of team name is that? If it isn’t obvious, I’m totally clueless about AHL teams.

Four games later, it was 2:00 AM and I realized I was addicted already. “Just one more game…” was the death of me.

Call of Duty: World at War beta
I found myself back playing the beta, but I’ve been sticking to only playing Team Deathmatch. I’ll have to give the War mode a shot at some point because it sounds like an interesting mechanic. I’m still having difficulty doing well on the dark map in the seaside village. It’s almost too dark and I’m practically relying almost entirely on my radar, which doesn’t help if there’s an adversary sneaking around. While I’m sure my overall kill-death ratio is in the negative, this map is definitely one where my deaths vastly outnumber my kills.

I’ve also hit level 5 during this sessions, so I’ve unlocked and made progress into the Challenges for each weapon type. So I’m definitely getting somewhere now since having a flash suppressor would come in handy on the above map. I’ve been feeling vastly outmatched by folks who are level 11 already, not only because of their skill, but because of some of the attachments such as the flash suppressor or a scope. Thankfully the Call of Duty progression system doesn’t make it feel like that being more evenly matched is out of reach–you just have to a little time and effort into it and I’m fine with that.

Thursday, October 16, 2008
Halo 3
DMoTsunami and I are replaying The Ark and The Covenant because our unfortunate disconnects during the game meant we restarted during rally points within each chapter. That was no good, because even though it unlocked the chapter for me, it didn’t record me as finishing the chapter on Legendary nor did it give me the achievement for completing the chapter. Very un-fun. This time we can breeze through it a bit quicker since I also know what we’re up against.

NHL 09
Like I junkie, I keep coming back to NHL 09 for my fix of “Be a Pro” mode. I only played two games, fiddled with the sliders a bit more and it’s starting to feel more natural and realistic. The shifts (especially when I’m resting) are still a little too long, but that is because I’m still only at five minute periods. I’ll increase this up to ten for the next game and on until I’m done with the mode or the game. Most of the games have been generally been close and it’s gotten me genuinely excited whether I win or lose.

I noticed that a lot of my gaming information has been incorrect when reported over on EA Sports World. According to my profile page I’m playing for the Grand Rapids Griffins when I’m on the Wolfpack and my opponent is inaccurate, although the scores are correct as best as I can tell. For some reason my updates section is also empty, when it should be reflecting all of my games and milestones within the game. It would be nice, given how EA is trying to implement tight integration between their games and the Web site, but it’s not that big a deal.

Q.E.D.

Sunday, October 5, 2008
Mega Man 9
Oh man, why don’t I set aside enough time to play this? I know it’s going to take more than 45 minutes or so, but I keep conning myself that I can do something worthwhile in a short period of time. Upon advice of others, I took on the Splash Woman stage on. I got a bit farther in the same amount of time and I basically only stopped because I was asked to play Halo 3. I can say this though, the part at the very beginning of the stage where you have finished progressing horizontally and you have to take your first jump down–only to pretty much be guaranteed to land on some sweet spiky death is almost unfair. But I kind of love it at the same time.

Halo 3
DMoTsunami and I tackled our next chapter and completed going through The Crow’s Nest pretty quickly. Next up was Tsavo Highway, of which I have heard muttered under people’s breath and I don’t know why. Now I know why and I think it’s mostly that little sequence when you’re making a last stand kind of fight in two bunkers and you’re being hit by multiple waves of Brutes and just when you think you’re all clear, a Wraith shows up just to make things interesting. We both died a lot here but we got through it. We scavenged for weapons of our choice and made for the two brand new Warthogs waiting for us to wreck havoc… and then the game froze.

A wonderful Internet hiccup left the game thinking that one of us had either quit the game or was disconnected, when neither was true. Regardless, we were both dumped back out into the lobby.

Unfortunately, this ill-timed issue meant we had to start before our land stand and redo that all over again. Instead, DMoTsunami and I called it a night.

Monday, October 6, 2008
LittleBigPlanet beta
In last week’s gaming log I forgot to mention that I had played LittleBigPlanet for about ten minutes or so–just enough to complete the first two levels of the The King’s Garden. That left Skipping the Tie and the last main level remaining. I completed those tonight along with a couple replays to try to get closer to 100% in the last two full levels.

I’ve now unlocked the create mode and being able to see other people’s level creations. I hearted two levels, one to play later and one to play immediately, if only because of the fact that the level was named LittleBigUncharted. I’ll be going to try the level creator the next time I fire LittleBigPlanet up.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Secret Game D

Yep. I played it and it was the only thing I played tonight. That’s all I can say.

Thursday, October 9, 2008
Halo 3
DMoTsunami and I were joined by a third for tonight’s Legendary co-op campaign as MrJared came to help us newbs out (check out his +20 K/D ratio on this Team Slayer match). We ripped through Tsavo Highway and The Storm at a pretty decent clip. If you’re ever playing with MrJared, I must warn you that he tends to be a little overzealous with his driving–often with, er, explosive results.

This was pretty fun, I’m glad that more games are starting to allow for co-op beyond two people, although I can start to see how that could be problematic from a game design side. Even though we died a few times during our game tonight, it somewhat felt that with three user-controlled characters, the number of enemies and level of difficulty didn’t ramp up as much as I expected it to. It almost felt too easy based on the previous sessions.

Or we’re just THAT good.

Call of Duty: World at War beta
Got an early beta key and hopped into a fairly uncrowded lobby for Team Deathmatch. I think we started with just three on one team and four on the other. By the time I left it was a full or nearly full lobby and the games were fast, furious and lethal. I really liked the Castle map look and layout.

So far, so good, Treyarch!

Friday, October 10, 2008
NHL 09
Set up my Be a Pro character and jumped into a quick five minute game with the NY Rangers vs LA Kings — kind of an preview of a game I’m going to in mid-December. Took a look at the instant replay feature, which reminds me of Skate.reel and that means a lot of good things.

Like editing highlight clips of games. OH. MY. GOD. That is going to be awesome… if I get around to it! Which in reality I won’t, but it was fun thinking about it.

The Kings won this game, although it was a tie game throughout all of regulation and it went down to the shootout. Which was scoreless for a pretty long time too. The Kings drew blood first and I couldn’t respond, letting them win. Total shame.

Saturday, October 11, 2008
NHL 09
Came back for another quick game–against the Canadiens this time around. I had to quite before I finished the game off, but it looked quite certain to be headed into another overtime session as, after I scored, the Canadiens drew even and then we were deadlocked for the remaining two periods. I really need to find someone who has tweaked the settings to bring it more in line with reality. I had someone a couple years ago provide me with their settings for NHL 07 and it felt much better than the default settings. I don’t have the time on my own to fiddle around with them to figure out what feels better, so I hope someone has done the hard work for me!

I also played a bit more around with the video clip editor and the uploading feature. Pretty cool but it doesn’t seem quite a full featured as the Skate.reel, which is a little frustrating. My biggest gripe is that it doesn’t seem to give you the option of applying different camera angles within a particular clip, so you’re stuck with finding the best one for the up to 25 second video clip. Not a big deal if you’re going to edit them together offline since you’ll want a full clip for each angle you plan on using, but not so great for putting something quick together. It also seems that the feature set is pretty much eliminated after you’ve saved it locally and come back to the video clip at a later time. You can’t view the clip and either edit it further or take a screenshot from within the clip, you can only watch it again as saved. I guess I was spoiled by Skate.

Q.E.D.