Arcade Cavalcade

Most people who play games for hours on end only to get the achievements are often accused of having no life. This hasn’t happened to me yet, but only because I didn’t have a life to begin with. This means I am free to play games non-stop until my eyeballs bleed just to get one achievement.

Now that I’ve cleared that up, I can talk about what I’ve been up to games-wise, and barring the problems I’ve been having with a certain beta game, they’ve all been on that wonderful white cuboid that sits next to my TV and hums loudly whenever it has to do anything. To be more accurate they all have been downloaded from XBLA, which in my opinion is a very good marketplace for downloadable games.

So what’s on the menu for this downloadable feast? Up as a starter, the spellcheckers nightmare, ‘Splosion Man. A 2.5D platforming puzzle set-up, you control an exploding man, surprisingly enough, who uses his ability to explode to blast his way through the levels, turning scientists into meat for some reason. The controls are incredibly simple with analogue stick controlling movement and every other button makes explode, flinging you into the air (having said that, the right trigger makes you “self-detonate”, killing you. I found this out the worst way). You can ‘splode mid air to continue a jump, and ‘splode once more for a third mid-air jump. The game is fairly robust, sporting 50 single player levels and 50 multiplayer modes (I think), although as is the major complaint with this game, they go on for too long and get too hard. Overall, ‘Splosion Man is a good XBLA title. The levels are interesting, the character is very quirky, and the boss fights spice things up. I’d like to see more boss fights in the sequel actually. Take notes, Twisted Pixel.

For a main course, the game I refuse to refer to as a “Metroidvania” style game, Shadow Complex. This game is also a 2.5D platformer, except this time you play as Nathan Drake-alike, Jason Flemming, although from this point on he shall be called Jason Asskicker. The story, inspired by an Orson Scott Card novel and written by Peter David, involves Asskicker and his girlfriend of apparently one day Claire going into some caves, but discovering a group of well-equipped home-grown terrorists who are preparing to cause civil war in the US of A. After Claire is capture Jason fights his way through the shadow complex, risking his life on several occasions to save the girl he’s known for one day. Plotholes aside, Shadow Complex is a good game. At the start of the game, you have a flashlight, climbing gear and a gun, and that’s what makes it so brilliant. As you hang from a ladder and blast a guard’s head in, you feel badass. When you jump off a ledge and punch a guard in the neck, you feel badass. When you fire at someone with anti-riot foam and then fire a grenade at the foam and it explodes, you laugh for a bit, then realise how badass it was. This game should be sold as a badass simulator. Seriously. It’s just a shame that towards the end, the sheer amount of enemies turns the game into more of a run and gun affair. Closing statements; Solid all-round game, few niggles.

For dessert, a classic given a new dressing, it’s The Secret of Monkey Island; Turbo HD Remix, or whatever. Although the game remains exactly the same, this new version features full voice acting, hand-painted HD backgrounds and characters and some smoother animations. First of all, SoMI is my third favourite MI game, after Curse and Revenge. My feelings towards this new game are slightly odd, in that I feel that a bit more work could have been put into it. Some of the voice acting seems weak, and whilst Earl Boen does a fantastic job with LeChuck, some of Guybrush’s lines sound slightly tired. Sorry, Dom... So to summarise, nice to hear the voices in the original, but doesn’t exactly meet my expectations. Here’s to the sequel, an infinitely better game.

So that’s that. I’ve also got the two Fable 2 DLCs but we can cover those another time. Coupla weeks, I dunno. I might do a bit about Fable III as well.
Next time on The Starting Village, I get Fallout 3, then my brain explodes from joy. See ya then!

Four Halves make a Box

Half Life 2;
I’ve been waiting to play Half Life 2 for a long time now and it was definitely worth the wait. The gameplay is good. The graphics are pretty as you fire wildly into them. The music is very good, and makes the whole experience much more cinematic. Considering this came out in 2004, it still stands up against some of the newer games that turn today’s market into a junkheap of armoured space marines and colourful family games. So yes overall, HL2 is awesome. However, I do have one problem with the story of Half Life 2. Don’t get me wrong, it is told in a very compelling and believable way, but it feels so far removed from the original they could be from entirely different franchises. I should point out this didn’t make the game any less enjoyable, it just confused me. However, G-Man is still a fantastic character in the changed context.

Half Life 2 Episode 1;
I’m not entirely sure how much time was between the two episodes but I’m glad I had the next episode ready to go, because I thought the ending to HL2 was really strange, and also a tad anti-climactic. Ep. 1 confused me at the beginning as for some strange reason you are given the regular gravity gun, which then becomes the Super Gravity Gun in exactly the same way as the previous game. But I digress. Episode 1, picking up exactly where HL2 left off, focuses a lot more on the relationship between Alyx and Gordon, and not only because you get a first person hug. The gameplay is exactly the same, although I would say that combat and puzzles mix more frequently. Apart from that, it’s pretty much the same in quality as HL2.

Half Life 2 Episode 2;
Episode 2 gets off to quite a slow start but very quickly becomes more exciting, partly because of the addition of the Hunters, and partly due to your Vortigaunt companion. I felt the story was much better than Ep. 1 and probably even HL2 itself, as I was always drawn into the story, whereas previously I had felt like somewhat of an observer. Ep. 2 also wins points because it does the see-saw puzzle on an epic scale, and the car is pretty swish as well. The Strider battle at the end is truly nothing short of epic and was definitely a high point. Whereas previous Strider battles had been a duck-and-fire routine, firing a sticky bomb onto the Striders then firing at them whilst been attacked by the Hunters is possibly the most tense gaming moment I have ever found myself in.

And whilst I’m on the topic of Half Life Games...

Half Life; Blue Shift;
Although I failed to get this in the sale, it’s still only three pounds, and in a recession, we all have to try and cut down on spending. Blue Shift is essentially Half Life told from Barney Calhoun’s point of View, and follows him throughout Black Mesa during the resonance cascade, and also briefly into everyone’s favourite border world, Xen. First of all, BS is very short. Even for me. It took me roughly about 5 hours, and that was not really concentrating and finding the hidden chumtoad. I sure I could speed-run this in about two hours, perhaps less. Having said that, my computer actually struggles to run the game anytime there is a flickering light, so perhaps not. Overall, BS feels like a bit of a fan-game but provides a nice little side story to the main game.
Onto the rest of the Orange Box...

Team Fortress 2;
I’ve actually been interested in the game for a while, even before the free weekend debacle. The Spy class had piqued my interest a while back and I’d been looking forward to stealthily backstabbing some dastardly snipers. Unfortunately, this dream got kicked in the head very early on when I found out being a Spy is effin’ hard. Every is suspicious of everyone else so disguises are fairly useless, and I’m always forgetting to come out of my cloak. So instead I decided I’d try the engineer. Now there’s a class with balls. Sentries are brilliant, teleporters are handy and dispensers... Well I guess dispensers make good shields so there we go. Apart from crippling connection issues and lack of map variety, playing Team Fortress 2 has been a laugh.
And finally...

Portal;

Yeah, it’s alright.

Viva la Resistance!

I'm not dead yet, don't worry about me.

My holiday didn't overshoot, I've just had a bit more to worry about over the past week than my lonesome blog. LIKE MY A-LEVELS. Which went quite well, thanks for asking. In about a month I'll be shipping out to Canterbury for about 4 years to study Biology (fun) and in my spare time I will attempt to play games, eat pizza, learn code, finish that novel I've been working on (joke) and maybe see if I can build a cheap gaming PC (not a joke).

I've beaten tons of games over the past two weeks, and played a few as well, but there's no time to go into all of them right now. I've done the Orange Box to death, and now I'm just trying to get some of the more obscure achievements (like playing through Episode One using only one bullet. I believe in myself!) I've started writing a quick summary so I might put it up tomorrow.

Well must dash, I'm off to a party, social butterfly that I am. Catch you all on the morrow, friends!

Shutting Up Shop

There was a reason that I didn't do a blog post the other day, my internet service provider is rubbish. And that's why I didn't post. Ha.

So this blog is going to be slightly stunted because I'm actually going on holiday at some point today. I'm off to Suffolk for a week so I'll be out of contact with the internet for a similar amount of time, assuming there isn't some kind local Wi-Fi that I can ste- make use of whilst I'm there.

In terms of games, I (finally) got The Orange Box for the 360, meaning I can kick back and play Half Life 2 all wee- OH WAIT, I'm going to SUFFOLK. Grr. Actually, I've already beaten Half Life 2, Episode One and Portal, so I guess there's less for me left to do. I'll be working on a post about them on holiday so that'll be up when I get home.

Because I'm not going to be at home for a week, I decided to get my laptop sent to the shop to have the left arrow key finally fixed. It's been broken for bloody ages and was starting to cut into my finger if I played any platform game for more than ten minutes. Unfortunately, I also found out later, after it got taken away, that Tales of Monkey Island has a demo out. Ah. So when I get my laptop back, that'll be the first thing I'll do, to see how it runs. Then I will finally be able to decide whether or not to buy it.

And finally I got 2100 Microsoft Fun Bucks the other day, which I then instantly spent on the Fable 2 DLC See The Future, and then XBLA game 'Splosion Man. One word to describe 'Splosion Man? Insane.

All this and more in the next exciting installment of The Starting Village, going live on the 17th of August! Catch you then, y'all!