Gamolism

Finished playing through the single player campaign of Cal of Duty: Ghosts last night, disappointed that there were no actual ghosts.  While I enjoyed the single player, I did feel that I was more along for the ride than any essential part of the team.  During most parts of the game if you stay low, do as you are told, and don’t put yourself in front of bullet storm your teammates will do the majority of the work for you.  The game is pretty sure that you are a bit slow and can’t work out what you need to do on your own at any one second, and will be constantly told to move forward, take cover, plant explosives here, take out the guy on the right etc.    The single player campaign will definitely not intellectually challenge you, but the graphics and production are detailed, smooth and buttery, the set-pieces amazing, the missions varied and the gun-play very satisfying.  I actually looked forward to each loading screen, which has a very cool graphical way of representing what is being communicated to you about the story and your next mission. 

An amazing amount of people worked on this game, watching the credits I counted at least 35 Davids, which I presume where not injured in the making of this game.

In all, I would say the single-player campaign justifies the cost of the game, however CoD is really focused on multi-player.  Now I’m not into multiplayer FPS’s, as

1. I like games, but I’m not particular good at them
2. I don’t have the time to get good
3. I don’t like being abused by 12 year olds

If you are into the multiplayer experience, then the single player campaign is a nice 5-7 hour addition to the package, if you are not, then I would wait until the game is on the cheap if you just want the single player experience.

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara (Xbox 360 Live Arcade) – This is a compilation of two arcade games from the mid-nineties, Tower of Doom and Shadow of Mystara, and it looks, sounds and plays like an arcade game from the mid-nineties, which is not a bad thing at all.  It’s sort of a Golden Axe on steroids, with heaps of characters, loot, levels to be levelled and (grind) achievements to be had.

I played through to completion which took about two hours, and if I was whacking dollars coins into the arcade version, would have cost me $48.  I’m sure if you were practiced and skilled, which I am not, it would have taken considerably less, but as the credits actually met nothing to me I just mashed the buttons as well as I could.  The actual cost to me was $5, as its on sale for the Xbox 360 at the moment.  The most annoying thing in the game is that the attack button is the same as the pick up button, so you find yourself surround by gnolls and other various beasties, go to take a swing and find yourself bending over to pick up some loot, outside of that it is a fun mindless affair.

This is a game that definitely be more fun with multiple players (up to 4) for a trip down arcade memory lane, and is available on PSN, XBLA, Wii U and Steam.  If you end up enjoying yourself with this one, then a good modern equivalent is Dragons Crown (if you can get over the comically large bouncing boobies).

So with one insolent screw standing between me and a (possibly) working virtual boy, I decided that the screw was not welcome and had to go  I enlisted (from the local hardware store) a very long drill bit, let’s call him Charles (no particular reason, seems good as any).  I wrapped Charles up in electrical tape as to try and keep him centred in the hole will he tussled with the screw.

Unfortunately Charles could not stay on target, with bit’s of 20 year old Virtual Boy plastic flying everywhere. I also (accidentally) decided to see if the Virtual Boy would bounce .. which it did not.  I decided to take a different tact which was to get Charles to remove all the plastic around the screw, and after 20 minutes of not so gentle drilling and a lot of ‘oh hell what am I doing!’ Charles came up trumps and victory was ours!!

Removing the data ribbons was surprisingly easy, I pre-heated the oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and promptly left the house with the oven on.  Returning an hour later I re-read some posts and realised that ‘the internets’ were talking about 200 degrees in Fahrenheit, not Celsius, so I de-heated the oven down to 85 degrees C and put the ribbons into bake for 2 minutes. 

After removing them, pressing down on the now soft-glue an then giving them taping them down.  I reassembled the Virtual Boy, taking an educated guess which one was for the right eye, and which was for the left, and plugged it the controller (which is where you turn the thing on from), and to my complete and utter surprise SUCCESS, both eyes now worked perfectly!

I wacked in a few games and gave it a run:

• Wario Land – A Mario like game which was surprisingly fun, knocked out 5-6 levels
• Mario Tennis – Got my ass handed to me by Princess Peach, 0-6
• Super Bomberman Tetris like game – The game and manual was all in Japanese .. which I don’t read, but I understand the language of rotating shapes to make arbitrary lines..

30 minutes of gaming with it was enough, staring at nothing but red lines does drive you a little crazy after awhile.  It now it sits proudly on my shelf as a working Virtual Boy.

When I’ve bought games for my boys, I’ve always looked to getting games that are appropriate(ish) and they can play on the same screen together (not against each other), and if I can join-in, all the better!  This is a list of some of the better ones, and the platform we play them on:

• Little Big Planet and Little Big Planet 2 (PS3 – 4 players)
• Skylanders SSA, Giants and Swap Force (PS3/PS4 – 2 players)
• Ratchet and Clank All-4-One (PS3 – 4 players)
• New Super Mario Bros U (Wii U – 4 players)
• Super Mario 3D World (Wii U – 4 players)
• All the Lego Games (PS3/PS4/XB1 – 2 players)
• Mario Kart Double Dash (GameCube – 2 players)
• Golden Axe (Megadrive – 2 players)
• TMNT (SNES – 2 players)

I wouldn’t mind hearing about any others out there (on any platform!) that are couch co-op an appropriate for a 6 year old and 8 year old to play together.

Played through Thomas Was Alone on the weekend, to complete a game in one weekend is an achievement for me, even if it is only 2-3 hours in length.  A good puzzle platformer game, made a great game through the brilliant commentary by Danny Wallace.

The puzzles and platforming are simple yet rewarding.  Each of Thomas’s quadrilateral friends have different abilities and jumping capabilities, and the puzzles revolve around using these capabilities to get each of our quirky rectangular shaped friends through to the exit point that represents their shape.

Some favourites for me were James, who has a complete disregard for the Newtonian laws of physics and falls upwards, not downward, and Sarah a quirky little double-jumper.  But realistically it’s the narration that makes it fun.

er.

Went to the markets for a bit of retro game hunting this morning.  Thick ice on the windscreen and the car telling me it’s 1 degrees outside should have been a telling sign that it was not going to be a day to find some retro goodness!  The only thing a bought was a couple of PS1 games for $3 each.

I have a set rule to spend no more than $5 each for CD based games, and these fitted the bill.  As another general rule I don’t buy old driving games, but I’ve got some good memories of Gran Turismo 2, so for me that’s $3 well spent.  Though I’ve got a few I don’t have a PS1 plugged in, but I do have a couple of PS2s and PS3s set up so thanks to the PS2’s and PS3’s backwards compatibility with PS1 games so I’m all good. 

I lot of people don’t know that all PS3’s are backwards compatible with PS1 games (while only some models are backwards compatible with PS2s).  PS1 games are 100% emulated in software on all PS3 models, whereas PS2 games are emulated with either

1. The PS2s Emotion Engine CPU and Graphics Synthesizer GPU chip for the Japanese/US launch version of the PS3, or
2. With software emulation and Graphics Synthesizer GPU in later models (including the Australian 60GB model released in Australia) or finally,
3. Not at all, which is the case for 99.9% of Australian PS3s out there

An Australian PS3 with PS2 backwards compatibility will gouge you around $300-450 on e-bay, whereas a PS2 console should set you back around $35-$50.