tempest in a teacup

Here’s last month’s edition.

Games that have been knocked off the list due to completion:

• Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition – well, Dante’s route on normal anyway. I’ve started a Vergil playthrough, but it’s more like something I can do if I’m in the mood. With this I can finally claim to have beaten a DMC game!

And that’s the only game I managed to beat last month.

• Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition – Still on Mission 5-2.
• Zack & Wiki – No progress here either.
• Super Mario Galaxy – Took a few stabs at clearing that Luigi coin mission, and the closest I came was 80-something coins before my reflexes failed me.
• NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams – I set my sights a little lower and decided to go for all C-ranks first so I could unlock the true ending to the game. Unfortunately this is easier said than done because some of the side missions are really fucking stupid.
• Advance Wars: Days of Ruin – Gathering dust. For some reason I simply can’t bring myself to finish that particular mission.
• Sonic Rush Adventure – Set a few more personal records in time attack, but otherwise nothing else. I’ve noticed that the physics in this game are quite broken (at least as far as Sonic games go).
• Mass Effect – I’ve unlocked my character’s specialised class (went for Shock Trooper) and after spending ages on sidequests I’ve finally started on the main story quests again. Still pretty good so far – the universe is interesting, and conversations with the supporting characters tend to reveal some interesting nuances over time.
• Beyond Good & Evil – Played a bit more. This feels like a Zelda game with most of the tedium/treating the player like he’s five years old stripped out. So far, having a lot of fun with it.

The only “new” entries on the list?

• Diablo II: Lord of Destruction – Nostalgia got to me after the Diablo III announcement. I’m rebuilding my old Zeal/Fanaticism Paladin (boring build, I know, but it was the first D2 character I ever made). In addition I’m playing a summoning Necromancer for playing online with PenPen.
• Devil May Cry 4 – So far it’s definitely easier than both Devil May Cry and Devil May Cry 3, but still rather fun. The Devil Bringer isn’t quite as interesting to me as the instant rev and other frame-specific moves like Table Hopper and the instant Exceed, which are the main source of depth in Nero’s play style.

Stay tuned for next month’s update, when I reveal pretty much the same list with no changes whatsoever!

I suppose I am, at least when it comes to Sonic games. I honestly believe that my cynicism is justified, though.

There’s an old Tamil proverb, a personal favourite of mine, that can roughly be translated as “If you endeavour to do something, do it such that everyone will praise you; or you are better off not doing it at all.”

Read more

WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING SHIT LIKE THIS

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Have you learned NOTHING?!

This stupid thing makes the werehog look awesome in comparison, seriously.

It’s times like this that I wish I drank alcohol, so I could drown my sorrows in it.

Nintendo: Hey gamers! We’re just going to talk about how awesome we are and about how we don’t really need you any more since we make more money selling shallow waggle-fests to people who really don’t know any better :D

Sony: So uh we have all this shit that’s coming out at some point and it’ll be really awesome! In the meantime have all these repackaged versions of our existing hardware!

Oh, and Sega?

So apparently Sonic Unleashed is part Sonic Rush/Secret Rings, part…stretchy hands combat game.

…

Worst E3 ever.

There were only a few things I was looking for out of the gaggle of E3 propaga- er news:

1. Mirror’s Edge news (this game still looks bloody awesome)
2. Sonic Unleashed news (hopefully my dreams don’t come crashing down around me)
3. Any news out of Valve (this had better come to Steam, damn it… and Episode Three details kthxbai)

Blizzard is a no-show because they just held their Worldwide Invitational where this little game called Diablo III was revealed, and where Starcraft II was shown off in a competitive match for the first time.

Anyway, on to the few other tidbits that caught my eye.

Apparently Nintendo has announced some thingamajig that will improve the motion sensing of the Wii remote. How it does this, I have no idea. I’m more concerned about the fact that plugging that thing into the remote seems to preclude the attachment of a nunchuk for smoother aiming in Resident Evil 4.

Microsoft’s presser was largely uninteresting to me since I don’t own an Xbox 360 and they hardly mentioned PC releases. The reaction on the Internet to the news that Final Fantasy XIII would be coming to Xbox 360 has been hilarious, though. It’s a repeat of the NERD RAGE that erupted when Devil May Cry 4 became a multi-platform title instead of a PlayStation 3 exclusive – somehow they feel betrayed because Square Enix decided to widen the game’s potential market. Whatever. I’ve given up on trying to analyse the psychology of lunatic fanboys.

Oh yeah, that two-player co-op in Resident Evil 5 is pretty cool. I doubt I’ll buy it unless that rumoured PC version materialises though. For the life of me, I just can’t aim with a thumbstick at all. Don’t ask why.

Here’s the original list.

Games that have been knocked off the list due to completion:

• Psychonauts – I didn’t get all the scavenger hunt items, etc, but I was level 50 by the time I hit the final boss, and he didn’t give me much trouble.
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time – Excellent game, but that final boss was far less challenging than the platforming area that led up to him.

Updated progress for the remaining items:

• Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition – No progress made. Haven’t touched my PS2 in a while, actually.
• Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition – Mission 5-2. @#%@ Regenerators.
• Zack & Wiki – No progress made. I don’t expect any will be made for a while, actually…
• Super Mario Galaxy – No progress made. That Luigi purple coin mission is really hard if you just bumrush it without any planning (like I tend to do)
• NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams – Finished the main story on both sides (not that it was hard, there being only 3 levels on each side and a common final level + boss fight). But I always try to play platformers to completion, so my next target is A-ranking everything. Yes, that includes that music mission in Memory Forest, a mission whose designer really needs to be shot.
• Advance Wars: Days of Ruin – I, uh, played a few more turns of mission 13. Still haven’t beaten it.
• Sonic Rush Adventure – I’ve been doing more time attack runs than Sol Emerald hunting, if you get my drift.

New entries on the list:

• Mass Effect – Level 20, just picked up Liara T’Soni. I’m playing as a Soldier, and will be going for a Paragon rating, like the goody-two-shoes that I am.
• Beyond Good & Evil – I actually haven’t gotten very far in this game because of a weird bug that causes my framerate to drop like a stone when I’m in the overworld. Just to remind you all, this is a 2003 game having problems running on a 2006 video card.

The graphics are beautiful, but the silly number of boost pads and essential linearity of the levels is somewhat worrying. I’d hate for this game to devolve into a mindless speedfest after the positive impressions people have been having. As much as people criticize the Rush series for emphasizing speed, they also remembered that they were platformers first and foremost, with speed being a secondary concern.

Of course they haven’t seen fit to show us any of the wolf segments yet, and the game is releasing in six months’ time.

OK, Sonic fanboys. You know how everyone claims that Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 is a bad game? And how so many of you claim that it isn’t really as bad as everyone says it is?

Watch and learn.

I really wish this series of videos had been around last year when I decided to play through the game for myself. I can say with 100% certainty that I experienced just about all the issues they run into (and unleash a torrent of curses at) throughout the entire game.

I recommend the Radical Train videos in particular for their unwashed display of jaw-droppingly bad game design and mechanics.

Some of you know that I have a pretty sizeable gaming backlog. A lot of it is games that I want to play but haven’t gotten around to buying yet (Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection is currently #1 on that list), but there’s also a pretty big backlog of stuff that I own but I haven’t gotten around to finishing yet:

• Psychonauts (I put some effort into beating it this past weekend, and finally reached the endgame…I had to skip a lot of optional stuff to do it though)
• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (I’m at about 60% completion)
• Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition (level 15, right after beating Vergil for the second time)
• Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition (mission 3-1…which is proving to be annoyingly long. Oh, and I have almost no ammo left)
• Zack & Wiki (the last puzzle is so ridiculously hard)
• Super Mario Galaxy (technically I’ve ‘beaten’ this game already, but I need to get one…last…star!)
• NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams (2 levels in on each side)
• Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (I’m on mission 13 of the campaign but for some reason I can’t bring myself to finish it)
• Sonic Rush Adventure (Blaze’ last Sol Emerald is giving me trouble)

This is not a state of affairs that I’m particularly happy with, given that there are other high-profile releases coming up that I’d like to devote my time to…in particular Mass Effect drops at the end of the month, and the PC version of Devil May Cry 4 arrives next month.

So much gaming to do, so little time :(

Just when I thought Sonic Unleashed was looking pretty nice

/headdesks