12 posts tagged “gaming”
So I had this itch to listen to the old theme for the '80s show 'The Peoples Court', and tracked it down to here.
With all the random instrumental inserts and timing, I can't help but to think that's what playing a game of Phoenix Wright should sound like.
...
I don't think he wins.
Way behind the times, I finally just beat HL2. Go me.
A few days back, I bought Half-Life 2 in response to Mark doing about the same in order to test his Mac's ability to run games in Windows. And everything was going fine, as were my first experiences with Steam. That was until about an hour ago.
I noticed that Steam was offering some sort of 'Everything Valve' dealie for a highly reduced price. Now, I've already finished the original Half-Life many years ago, and even before I beat that, completed Opposing Force. But I never got to try Blue Shift, something I'd always wanted to do. And considering I wouldn't mind playing the previous two, and this pack included a few other things of interest (the hardcore war games don't appeal to me very much), I decided $79.99 wasn't too big of a hit, considering I'd pay most of that if I bought everything of value individually.
So, I downloaded everything just fine. And for S&G, decided to play the original Half-Life for nostalgia and to see how it runs on a much more advanced computer. But some of the seemingly arcane sound settings confused me, prompting me to see if I had any sort of digital manual, PDF, or the like.
And I don't.
Not one. Even Half-Life 2, which I bought from a physical, real life store, with a thick box much too over sized for its lonely DVD and a single slip of paper detailing the basic controls and instalation instructions, contains not the slightest hint of a manual. Not in print, not upon the DVD, and not installed to my hard drive.
Searching online for such a manual for either of these two games turns up nothing for the first, and a PDF of the same card that the store-bought box contained. And of course Steam's 'support' page is a joke for anything I attempt to find, be it related to my sound concern or the manuals themselves.
Don't even get me started on Steam's user forum.
SMT: Devil Summoner Interview with Tomm Hulett of Atlus USA
My life is over. I will have no more free time, ever. None. I will have no constructive deeds to my name. My family is going to abandon me, and there's a good chance I'm going to lose my job with all these games so very desperately crying out for my attention. In fact, I don't think I can remember a year with as many games I've been so eagerly awaiting.
Dead Rising, Disgaea 2, Phantasy Star Universe [oh baby], about ten others, and now, a new SMT game... I'm so screwed.
PS: Dear Gaming Powers-That-Be, please make more 'local' multi-player games as necessary to me as the ones above, so that my friends will not also abandon me during the onslaught of beautiful-but-socially-unfriendly RPGs.
I finally broke the 1000 Gamer Point mark today on my 360 by grabbing the 'get to wave 10' achievement in Joust. Actually, it was a pretty amazingly played game, as me and Mark were totally tearing it up in a wonderful display of aerial acrobatics, pixels away from each other countless times, and never once killing one another.
The curiosity is that we barely made it to wave ten, and for the first time in our many attempts to do so, yet one of the achievements is to hit wave 100 with default options set. I think it's safe to say that this will be yet another arcade game that I will never, ever manage to capture all the achievements.
Oh well, at least I'll always have you, Uno.
I finally broke the under-1000 ranking barrier in Mutant Storm for Tally Mode.
Essentially, Tally Mode differs from the regular game by allowing you to pick any level, provided you've beaten the level before it, and play it with one life and no items at any difficulty in order to achieve a high score. Then, all the scores of all the levels you've cleared are added together to give you your total tally score.
Mine just happens to be just shy of my archnemisis, 'RETROPANTY'.
Actually, I've never met him/her/it... But, I will destroy.. Uh.. It. Yes, yes I will... And considering I still have twenty uncleared rooms for the highest scoring difficulty, there's actually a very easy chance of that.
Mark just pointed me to this link from GameSetWatch regarding the (news to me) sequel to Mutant Storm, which will apparently be released in the Xbox Live Arcade for the 360 just the same as its predecessor.
However, I do have to admit that in looking at the offered screen shots, which are beautiful, they do seem very horizontal and.. PSP-like..
Either way? Awesome.
My local GameStop happened to have a used copy of Gitaroo Man, so I bought it on a whim while reserving Disgaea 2. Of course, this just reminds me that I need to post some pictures of my SL project of a similar, guitar-esque nature..
In contrast to my recent cancellation of GameTap, I'm quite the fan and supporter of the Xbox 360's Live Arcade.
I come from an older generation where games were as complicated as 'hey, grab that star and you'll beat the high score'. And the plots could be generally summed up into 'hey, grab that star and you'll rescue the <whoever>', generally followed by 'and you'll beat the high score', when today's games are complicated enough to warrant minor degrees to understand them, and plots easily rivaling those of the big-screen.
And not that there is anything wrong with that, but I have noticed that the more engrossing games become, the less challenging they actually are. Especially with saturated features like save points, in-game help, cheat modes, and secret codes, that were totally rare and novel back in the days when I was burning quarters and blowing into cartridges.
So it makes me very happy that almost all of the games on Xbox Live are quite in the same fashion that I grew up with. In fact, there are a few games on Xbox Live that I did grow up with.
Lately I've been playing a game called Mutant Storm, and just a few hours ago acquired my fifth achievement. It is basically a Robotron 2049/Smash T.V. clone; the dealie where one stick controls your movement, while the other allows you to freely shoot in any direction you may or may not be headed.
I actually tried the demo for this game some months ago when I first received my 360, and totally disliked it. The demo allows you to play nine pre-selected levels that are rather boring and pretty straight forward as 'shoot these slow moving, mindless mutants'.
The demo doesn't actually lend any scope into the game's actual thinking, holding 89 levels that are each a new, slightly different puzzle that forces you to play a little differently, and sometimes a lot differently, than the previous. The 'mindless wave after wave' feel of the demo is rarely used in the full game (actually, about nine times.. How suspicious..), and instead, you are presented with quickly moving puzzle-rooms that are easily replayable and even slightly modified each time.
Now if only Xbox Live Arcade would add stuff at a more acceptable rate... They'd be able to take my money faster.
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