07 Jan 2007
Got it!
Finally past that really tedious bit in Zelda. Huge sigh and many thanks to Iain for telling me how to skip cut scenes. On to more interesting bits!
Have fun.
04 Jan 2007
Legendary annoyance
Isn’t it depressing when something just screws something up?
I’ve been playing the new Zelda game, Twilight Princess. It’s been a good ride. A dark fairy story with some good puzzling and searching and doing and fighting. Excellent atmos, good design, good art work etc.. I was loving it.
I have to stress “was”.
I’ve got to a bit that seriously disappoints to the extent of hacking me off enough not to want to carry on playing. And I know there’s going to be some good stuff to come.
You have to accompany someone across a bridge, along the bottom of a gorge and then across a wide open plain. All the while people are firing arrows at you and causing mayhem. Seems a reasonable plot point to me.
But they’ve screwed it up appallingly badly. Firstly you’re on horseback which should be great but is so unresponsive to make it fatally annoying on its own. For instance you’re running alongside the gorge and one pixel of the horse slightly brushes against the wall of the gorge. In real life you’d get slight chafing on the trousers, that sort of contact. Well in this game it means the horse stops dead, instantly. You then need to manoevre around so that you’re pointing away from this glancing blow. The horse takes a second or two to respond and is then slow to get moving. This means your very clever charge has wandered off into the plain and been killed. Game over.
If you get past this bit then the plain itself is even more annoying. Infinitely re-spawning enemies come at you at the most annoying moments. Fair enough but then the fighting system for being on horseback is just as appalling as the moving system so fighting is an horrific chore rather than exciting. You charge gets set alight and you have to put the flames out. We’re talking about a bloody great cart behind a horse. But somehow it’s harder to target this to help it than it is to target a moving thing the size of a bat in any other part of the game.
When you finally make it to the end you have to open a gate. You have the key. You get off the horse to open it but the cart is still aflame which means you can’t unlock the gate to get the cart away from the baddies by moving into the next area.
It is so irritating it’s nearly beyond belief.
To wreck a beautiful game by putting in a severely poorly implemented “driving” bit is such a shame. I’ve tried about 10 times and ended up by hurling the bloody controller away in disgust because of the sheer uselessness of the implementation of this bit.
Oh and if you switch the Wii off you have to go through the most annoying of game cliches, the unskippable cut-scene that adds little and takes an age before the irritating gameplay bit. I’ve seen it 5 times now and it really doesn’t help having to sit and watch the telly for 5 minutes while it goes through the motions.
What a depressing way to possibly end my go at what’s probably a fantastic game beyond this bit.
Sad.
Have fun.
27 Dec 2006
Cold Turkey
2 days before Christmas the internet at home decides to break. Router’s fine, PC is fine but the ISP can’t get any content to me. So I’ve had 5 days internet-less. It’s like losing a leg.
I’m annoyed ‘cos I can’t keep up with rec.juggling and blogs and stuff. Nor can I find Gamefaqs to get me past the bit on Twilight Princess I’m totally stuck on. K can’t find out what’s on Bg TV. And the family can’t get in touch with me to try out the webcams we all got for Christmas. I’m also late sending a CV in to Ethitec as requested.
Hopefully they’ll sort it today but they’re not guaranteeing it. Aaarggh.
Oh Christmas was nice.
The day was quiet and I cooked a whopping meal with all the trimmings (minus sprouts) which went down a treat.
Presents were opened and I managed to get half the world’s supply of chocolate and biscuits. K and Ma got electric blankets off me which seem to have gone down very well indeed.
In the evening the usual suspects came round for fun and japes. The games were good and the laughter was infectious particularly when P and C got to say “poopoo” a large number of times and then Pee did his fish impression which is never to be repeated and had to be seen to be believed.
And so back to work – and disagreeing with people on rec.juggling.
Have fun.
18 Dec 2006
Be-wiied at last
The title says it all really.
K and Maiko loved making Miis of us all (got a better one of me now, and Maiko’s is excellent) but K seems rather unmoved by the games. If Nintendo want to get non-gamers then K should be a model. If they can get her into it then they can get anyone.
The accuracy of the controllers seems a little improved over D’s, there’s no juddering at all. I reckon it’s either the room is darker or the bar wotsit needs to be above the telly (D’s is below). Anyway D I need your console code and I’ll share mine then I might be able to pass messages along. Anyone else wiied up and wants to swap codes then feel free to join the undoubted rush of eager code swappers.
Zelda’s looking promising too. Yay.
Have fun.
13 Dec 2006
Mix of the day
Loads to rattle through.
Gamecube: sold to the Lizzah girl over there at the back!
K: back home today.
Work: changes likely in the near future! Woohoo.
Chrimbo: looking like being a decent one with games played and food ate and pressies nearly all already bought and wrapped.
Pressies: not sure if I should take the things I got for me, Pa and Bryan back as they’re rubbish and don’t do what they said.
News: The NHS spends a minimum of £55m on interpreters. Is this news? I thought it’d be far more than that. At times at one clinic I run there are a minority of people who can speak English. I think interpreters can be necessary but they also do act as a crutch somewhat. So rather like I hate seeing quite able people using electric scooters when they should be keeping walking to maintain their fitness lest they sink into a pit of disability that is easily avoided; we see people not learning English because they don’t have to. This leads to all the “not assimilating” business we hear so much about. What’s this a government policy that’s self-defeating? Never.
Oh and I’m not at all annoyed that the interpreters get paid more than I do per hour!
Have fun.
12 Dec 2006
Gnash again
Sunday is Wii day for me.
I went into town this afternoon and asked when I’d get my Wii.
“What number are you?” they asked.
“106″ I replied.
“We had 100 in so come in at the weekend, we’ll have more by then.”
Aargh. So close again.
Have fun.
11 Dec 2006
Wiikend Part 2!
Saturday was an early start especially considering the late night on Friday.
T’bus down to London to meet Rebecca and her man Matt. Was due to meet at Victoria but ended up meeting near Big Ben instead.
Wandered a lot and drank and ate a bit including in The Texas Embassy (ok and with a excellent waitress, still not as good as Clare at the Harvester in Crawley though). We also had a wander around Hamley’s which was a nightmare with all the Christmas shoppers bundling in there. Back to her pad for more food and some games. Turns out Matt is preternaturally adept at Jenga.
Sunday morning we went to The Science Museum to see the “Game On” exhibition. They have a Wii and a PS3 but you have to book a slot. The Wii slots were filled til the afternoon so we chose the PS3 instead. Looked around a bit and played some storming old arcade games including Asteroids, Galaxions, Phoenix, the original Star Wars arcade game was there too and I’m better at it than I was back then and, of course, Space Invaders. Spent a bit of time showing off on Super Monkey Ball 2 before realising it wasn’t the best use of my time to play a game I’ve got at home so I headed over to whop Tempest 2000′s arse instead. Rebecca turns out to be quite good at Pacman and Matt loves his “Populous”. Watched loads of people on “Guitar Hero” and then went to have a go on the PS3. As we got to the demo area there weren’t that many people around. A slight wait of 10 minutes for the PS3 was mentioned so we asked if we could Wii instead. We got in! So I taught the demo woman how to navigate the Wii menus to get us to play. Beat Matt at Tennis and then started to beat Rebecca when our time ran out. I suppose I should have let them spend their time playing considering I’ve already had a go.
The PS3 demo was running Ridge Racer [edit: actually it was "Motor Storm", sorry] and it looked vaguely pretty but was still juddering and slowing down horrendously whenever more than 1 vehicle was on the screen. I remain to be impressed by the thing. A universally applauded idea was our switch to the Wii instead.
We had a weekend of famous people spotting too and with only slight exaggeration this ended up with us swearing to remember the anecdote of when we saw Edgar Wright playing Judi Dench at Wii Tennis.
Then home again and work again. Ah well games have to be paid for I suppose.
Have fun.
Wiikend part 1!
Had a razz on a Wii on Friday night. D got his and to his credit did go out and buy another controller.
Much fun was had. The best communal bit was Mii creating. I didn’t have a look at Zelda. Wii Play has some very tedious aspects to it (“Find Mii” anyone?), Rayman is cool especially the rabbids and the dance stages. Sports was ok but tiring, notably the boxing. And finally we come to Super Monkey Ball BB – very good with some really bad party games to mess it up. I think the games in it were just the studio having a brainstorm about how to use the controller. A trend I hope stops soonish and gives us some solid games with fixed controls.
An excellent evening. See Clurb’s site for Mii’s wot we done (although she seems to have put links that don’t work for everyone else’s Mii).
Have fun.
08 Dec 2006
Blimey!
As I’m on my own at the mo I decided that I’d go shopping last night at just around midnight hence coincidentally getting to Tesco in time to get me a Wii whilst I was there.
I got there at about 11.45 and there was already a queue. As they divvied them up I was the 3rd person after the things sold out. Pah. It was odd though because they weren’t selling anything else with it. So no extra controllers and, more to the point, no games. Seems a little odd.
I thought I’d try Sainsbury this morning but, although I was first in the queue before it opened I rather stupidly picked the one Sainsbury in Leicester (apart from the city centre one) that doesn’t sell electronics. Ah well. Couldn’t get to other shops ‘cos they all open at 9 and I’m supposed to be at work by 8.30. [edit oh and Leicester's Toys r Us sold out by 9.10]
Looks like I’ll just have to wait for Gamestation to get my order in.
Hopefully D’s showed up today and we can of a go on it later. I’ll try and get me a controller later since he rather ridiculously didn’t bother ordering any extra. It’s a party games machine!
Have fun.
[edit] Got me a controller and a couplo’ games this lunch time. Game on!