Entry 7 - 01-19-2009

It's been a while since I've played something. This weekend though I was able to squeeze in some quality time with the 360.

Here is what I played:

NHL '09 - I bought this very close to the actual release of this game. Up to this weekend I had only played a handful of games in the Be A Pro mode and haven't touched it since. Not that it's bad, just that I wasn't entirely in the mood for a hockey game. But like most other games, sports games are much better with friends. We played a couple games of '09 at Parker's on Saturday and it was a grand ol time. Still on this good feeling with the game I picked it up and played about a period and a half of the Be a Pro mode. Again it's not a bad game I just don't think I'm in the mood for a sports game. Sports games are more fun with other people anyways so I'll be playing this again when I have some friends to beat.

Halo 3 - I was about as surprised as you were that I cracked open the case on this game. 2 years after it's release and Parker and I decided to play some multiplayer. It was pretty much as I expected it would be. Fun but also frustrating. Everyone is much better than I am and can do many things I can't. But then again it's always fun sniping a headshot or meleeing someone with the butt of your battle rifle.

Braid - Decided to come back to this game after taking some time off from it. It has been a while but I was able to pick up right where I left off. Solved some puzzles, got some puzzle pieces and called it a night. The one thing this game does really well is it makes you think in ways you never have in any other video game. It seems to be the case that solving some of the puzzles requires extremely precise timing of your time freezing ability and leaves little room for error. A little frustrating at times when you know what you have to do and you just need to get the timing just right for everything to fall together. In one situation I had to slow down some canon balls and make it through a tunnel with a key. Which wasn't so bad except for getting out of the tunnel and back onto the ladder. It took me a few tries because there were two canons firing at different intervals and I had to time it just right so I would be able to jump over one and jump under the other. Of course I also had to leave myself enough time to get out of the tunnel before the first canon ball beat me to it. The satisfaction of finally getting the timing down is great, but the frustration of the repeated tries was trying.

Entry 6 - 01-12-2009

Entry for the end of the weekend. I was able to get in some quality time with the PS3. I no longer live with it and currently I am only able to play it on the weekends. Here is what I played:

Mirror's Edge - When I first played the demo to this game I loved it. I fell in love with the first person free running and loved the how fluid the movement and controls were. Upon reading reviews and initial reactions of the full game, I was apprehensive about opening my shrink wrapped pre-ordered copy. Out of the gate the gaming world was relaying that the game fell far short of expectaitons. It was a frustrating and short trial and error trek through a very beautiful game with many flaws. After realizing I shouldn't let these people's reactions force me to return the game and I remembering I only spent $10 on it, I finally decided to tear it open. 

During my first play session I went through the first three missions and had fun with it. I understood the frustrations and experienced the trial and error gameplay. I put it down for a bit and finally picked it up again this weekend. I burned through missions 4 to 9 and finished off the game. It is the only game I played (I had planned to try and make it through MGS 4) and it was the only game I wanted to play. The trial and error gameplay to me was non existant. Every situation I was put in I was able to see what I had to do and I just had to get my fingers to press the buttons at the right times in order to make it work. And when it worked it was very cool. I loved running at full speed off a ramp then a transition to a wall run then a transition to a 90 degree turn to jump to a platform that is hanging 100s of feet in the air. I also loved walking into a room and pressing the circle button (a hint button to direct your view to where you have to go) and seeing that I had to travel from the bottom of the room to the top of a 500 foot pillar. Everytime I walked into a room I had to figure out where to go to get to the next point and that was always fun to me. I loved having to find the first ledge or the first handhold to grab onto to make it to the next point. The other aspect of the game was the combat. While not exactly deep it was fun. At the beginning of the game an enemy encounter would get me cursing at the TV because it was annoying to try and make it past the blues. But as I played more I learned the finer aspects of the enemy encounters. You have to isolate the enemies and take them out one by one. That really made the combat much more interesting and much more fun. Entering a room full of blues went from a shoulder slumping curse-fest to an exciting game of cat and mouse. I would run around the room jumping between different floors and the blues would chase me. Then I isolated the enemy and would jump kick him to the head and then kick him in the crotch and give him a nice punch to the noggin. That would knock out most enemies so the next step was to get up to full speed again and isolate the next guy. By the end of the game the combat was not the big let down that it was in the beginning. It helped break up the free running and kept the enjoyment of the game at a high. At the end I could definitely say that I enjoyed every aspect of the game. The only issue I had was the frustration of missing a button press or the game seemingly not doing what I told it to do.  

As for other aspects of the game (e.g. graphics, atmosphere, etc) the free running on the roofs of buildings was always exhilirating and it was enhanced by the sound of wind whipping past your ears when you hit a full speed sprint and were leaping and rolling from building to crane to building. Falling to your death always gave me that vertigo sickly feeling in my stomach. Mirror's Edge is a very immersive game.

My only regret in my purchase of the game is that I didn't get it for the 360. Besides the obvious lack of achievement point whoring, I prefer the feel of the 360s analog sticks. Especially for controlling first person games. But there is exclusive DLC to look forward to on the PS3. So hopefully that will change my regret to a feeling of joy!

Entry 5 - 01-09-2008

Had a nice short and sweet gaming Session with Griebs last night. 
Here is what we played:

N+ - I had some work to catch up on so I watched Mr. Griebs play probably his favourite game, possibly of all time. Watched him die and die and die and pull of some amazing moves. That game is one of the most frustrating experiences in gaming. It punishes in the right ways. It's difficult because of design, not because of faults with the game. It takes a lot of skill to succeed in the harder levels, so it's very rewarding. But getting there is a real test of one's patience.

Call of Duty: World at War - By the time I finished up my work Griebs had just about as much as he could take of the little Ninja so we booted up some CoD to get some co-op action going on. First things first, the way they do the split screen is different and good. It's not the typical "split the whole screen in two" method of split screen. It splits the screen but keeps the usual aspect ratio. It does this by having the two screens "floating" next to eachother. It's similar to having two smaller TVs contained in one big one. It works well and I like it much better this way than the traditional way of split-screen.  Besides that though the game is very generic. Not much to separate this from the other shooters out there. I haven't played many WW2 shooters (probably only CoD2) so I am not burned out on that concept. But the game feels very generic in the way the story is structured and the missions are structured. Nothing surprising or ground breaking so far. But it is a solidly generic game after the three (or so) missions that Griebs and I played. Plus anything in co-op is better because you're playing with someone else. So points for that.

Entry 4 - 01-07-2008

During my gaming session last night I read about the 1UP/EGM destruction...it was quite a shock. I don't personally know any of the people that work there but it's amazing how attached you can get to people just through a podcast. 1UP's podcasts to me were what differentiated it from the rest of the other Internet sites out there. They were really taking videogame journalism to new areas with their podcasting and videos. That is the part that I will miss the most. So much potential wasted and possibly never realized. Hopefully everyone who lost their job will land on their feet and move on to bigger and better things.

And here is what I played last night:

Gears of War 2 - Played some Horde mode with Parker, Diego, Diego's sister and Parker's buddy Quach (I think that's how you spell it). I love Horde mode. Definitely the best part of multiplayer for me. Waves and waves of bad guys against you and four other dudes/dudettes.  The kind of team play that this mode can foster is incredibly satisfying. We played on the Hardcore difficulty level and started at Wave 10. We made it to Wave 20 but could not beat it. We played on the Stasis map and basically hit a wall where we could just not kill the Locust fast enough. The biggest obstacle are the Blood Mounts. On Hardcore the mount has a strike attack that knocks you down with one hit. It's difficult to avoid when there are 2 blood mounts, Grinders, Boomers, Maulers and tickers running around the same area. The best way to take them out is to shoot the mount in the head until it shakes off it's helmet. While it's shaking off it's helmet shoot the rider off and move in for a chainsaw or finish of the mount with some shotgun shells. Sounds easy, but difficult to pull off in practice.  All in all my ass was saved many times by my teammates and we all had a great time. I think they might have gone on playing after I tried to get some rest.

Entry 3 - 01-06-2009

Got around to some gaming pretty late in the night. I was tired but it was well worth it.

Here is what I played:

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix - I absolutely love this game. I loved the original SS2T and the HD Remix just ups everything to 11. The art is great and the sprites are finally high rez. The game plays almost the same as it did back in the day; I'm not super hardcore so I wouldn't notice any of the changes that they made. But damn this game is just as fun and addictive as it was. Played a few rounds with a buddy and a Shacker friend. I won 1 match :(. But still damn fun.

Left 4 Dead - Was helping Diego pop his cherry in this game, so what better way than to play the Versus mode! We invited another Shacker to join us and filled the rest of the room with pubs. We started off pretty bad. No one but our Shacker friend really knew how to play. We were getting destroyed for the first couple of rounds (and when I say destroyed I mean mutilated). But we finally were able to a good flow going and put together a few wins. Overall score said we still lost but I think we won more rounds than they did! The Versus mode of the game is quite different than any other multiplayer game that I've played. There are two sides: Survivor and Infected. Two teams of four and each group takes turns on both sides for each map. Objective for the Survivors: Get to the Safe House. Objective for the infected: Don't let Survivors get to Safe House. For the first couple of rounds when we were as the Survivors we were moving too slowly out of the gate (mostly due to our inexperience) and we were getting rushed almost from the beginning. Resulting in very fast deaths and short rounds. As infected we were not organized and didn't quite understand the abilities of each of the different "class" of Infected. After a while we learned that we really needed to hoof it through the level as the Survivor and we needed to trap the Survivors when we were playing as the Infected. End result: we learned how to play better and had a grand ol' time doing it.

Entry 2 - 01-05-2009

Didn't play too much on my last day of Holidays. But I did get around to playing a little.

Here is what I played:

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts - Finally was able to make it past the stupid race that I was stuck on. I blasted the other racer (can't remember the stupid name Rare gave him/her) and knocked off one of the wheels of the car. Only slowed them down a bit but it was enough for me to beat them to the finish line and under the required time to get the jiggy. That was the most notable accomplishment of my gaming from yesterday. I collected a couple more jiggies but nothing out of the ordinary. I'm still enjoying the game and would recommend you pick it up, especially since it's a lower priced game (I was able to get it for $25 CDN).

Entry 1 - 01-04-2009

I have decided to keep a gaming "blog". I put blog in quotations because it's really just for me to have something to look back on at years end to see what I played and how I actually felt about the games I played during the year. I have a terrible memory so this is the only way I can think of to do it.

Here is what I played yesterday:

Mirror's Edge (PS3) - I'm really loving this game. I can understand the hate it is getting from some media outlets and various people on the Internet. But I love the adrenaline rush you get when you're running at full speed and jumping from building to building with jumps that are just inches away from you falling to your death. I'm about 3 chapters into the game right now so my opinion could change seeing that most peoples complaints were the trial-and-error gameplay. But I'm looking forward to finishing it up.

Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts - Another pretty good game. I started playing earlier this week and I'm having a great time with it. I didn't get a chance to play any of the Nintendo 64 entries for this game so I came in with no expectations. It's been a great ride so far. Interestingly so far it's more of a racing game than any sort of platforming game. I'm stuck losing in a very frustrating race. I've come very close a couple of times but at the very end I've either been shot with an ice pellet, a grease slick, or hit by one of the environmental hazards. Luckily they have different worlds and challenges so I can still progress without beating this stupid challenge. I can go and get more jiggies and come back and keep trying until I reach the frustration point again.

Gears of War 2 - Played a little bit of Wingman with Parker, it was a great time. I don't play much GoW2 competitive multi-player, simply because I'm not very good at it. It's a much slower paced game than I'm used to and I'm having some trouble adjusting to it. Going into aiming mode (holding left trigger) really slows down your cross hair movement and I cannot hit anyone unless I go into that aiming mode. I need to figure out a solution for my suckage...my quest will continue as long as I can find a buddy to play with.

That's about it for my gaming yesterday. More to come tonight or tomorrow!