LOL GOT YOU!
I’ve not read anything for months, mainly because we’ve not bought any new books. Instead, I’ve been playing videogames. I’ll be honest – I’m struggling a bit with Pokémon Emerald. It’s not the difficulty, it’s just the slog. The areas seem a lot farther apart in this game and I’ve not found Fly yet, and as such, biking between areas and going back and forth from a new area I’m trying to get through to the Pokémon Centre after four of my trainee Pokémon have fainted is wearing thin.
I bought Afterburner Climax the other day, and while it is quite a decent game, it’s quite short. It’s also baffling why they allowed you to turn the EX options (such as a larger targeting reticule and automatic missile launching) on and still get Achievements. It was so easy, I even logged in to Jane’s account and got the 200 G’s for her, too. I’m proud that I got some of the harder Achievements (like getting the best ending) on her game on my first go with none of the EX options turned on. I also got her some G’s in other Xbox Live Arcade games: Geometry Wars 2, Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram, New Rally X, Gunstar Heroes and Qix++. It was quite fun going back and getting some Achievements all over again – Wax On and Wax Off on Geometry Wars 2 were still pretty tricky and took more than one attempt, but the New Rally X ones were as easy as the first time.
It’s a shame Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram is such an awful game nowadays, I used to love it on the Saturn. With the advent of proper dual-stick controls, the novel method they adopted several years ago for the arcade version has become horribly out-dated. Along with the whole boosting mechanic, and having to press both triggers at once to fire your third weapon, it’s just a bit fiddly. Give me standard first-person controls any day. Gunstar Heroes on the other hand, has aged very well. The visuals still stand up as they are vibrant, stylised and full of character, the tunes are still memorable and distinct, and the gameplay is still rock-solid. It’s a shame it’s such a slight experience by today’s standards.
I absolutely adore Qix++. They’ve changed the aim of the game from the original version in that it’s no longer just about claiming area and avoiding the enemies – to score big you have to hem the Qix into a small space with precision cuts, then take 90%+ of the arena at once. For example, instead of cutting right up the middle and claiming half the screen, cut up then back down again (this may need to be done in three or four seperate moves, just to be safe!), reducing the available space for the Qix to move around in. The less space they have to move around in, the smaller they get, making it easier to further reduce their territory. They do tend to get enraged quicker when they are smaller though, boosting their speed and overall danger. I’m chuffed that on Jane’s game I completed Section 1, cleared all 8 stages with 95% or more, scored over 3,000,000 points and fully upgraded the marker on my first go.
I’ve also been playing quite a lot of Monday Night Combat – I had my first “proper” go with the RF crew last night, and it made the experience so much better than teaming up with random people. Crossfire is, at it’s heart, an objective-based game – those who forget that will lose. At times we faced opposition who treated the game more like a straight up Deathmatch, it reminded me of the golden days of Halo. They’d just be going around in a gang killing our team, while we formulated a strategy and fulfilled the objective to win. No matter how many kills you get, if it shows you a “You Lose” screen at the end of the game, you’re gonna feel like a loser.
I also hit my 75% completion target on True Achievements, so it’s all good. Not sure where to go from there though, 80% would take a serious amount of new games, as I got up to the 75% by mostly going back to old games I hadn’t quite got the most out of, achievement-wise.
