Category Archives: Xbox

Grab Bag Of Disappointment

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I played Sacred a bit more tonight, but at one point I was escorting some Prince to another place to drum up support for an upcoming war, and he died along the way. He was a pretty good fighter, but we just got completely overwhelmed at one spot. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten to save recently… The game auto-saves, so I went back to see where the last one was, but it was over an hour before that point, so there are a lot of side quests I’d have to redo.

Ugh. It’s really my own fault, but it has sapped a lot of my enthusiasm for tonight. It’s a decent game, but not *that* good, so I’m tempted to say I’ve seen enough of it to get the ‘feel’ of it and just shelve it again and wait for Sacred 2.

Next up, I got around to checking out the Nine Inch Nails songs released for Rock Band yesterday (March Of The Pigs, The Collector, and The Perfect Drug). They’re good songs, but…they’re not really guitar songs. The guitar bits in March of the Pigs are very short, and in the other two you wind up playing other instruments as well (a piano in The Collector and a mandolin in The Perfect Drug) just to give the guitar player something to do.

I played the bass lines in them as well, and March of the Pigs and The Collector are much more interesting that way, but there’s a huge stretch of absolutely no bass activity in The Perfect Drug. Again, they’re not bad songs, but as far as Rock Band goes they’re really biased towards the drums, which are supposed to be quite complex and challenging on all of them.

And I capped off the night with a bit more time in N+, where I redid a couple earlier episodes just to beat a friend’s score on them (tee hee), and did a couple new episodes. I’m up to Episode 29 now, but I haven’t finished Episode 24 yet, as 24-4 drove me nuts for a while and I eventually gave up on it. The difficulty is definitely rising rapidly now, and I’m often retrying dozens of times per level and swearing constantly at the screen. Of course, that’s exactly what its sadistic designers intended, and user-made levels are notorious for often being near-impossible…

I’ll Pursue Lu Bu If I Damn Well Please

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Well, I had intended to start Crysis tonight, but before I knew it it was late again, so I popped in Dynasty Warriors 6 for a quick spin instead.

I’ve only played DW5 before, and this one is similar of course. All the same characters, big battles, etc., but that’s expected since it is based on a telling of actual Chinese history. The main things new in this one that I’ve noticed so far are skill trees for each character, and the ability to climb, jump, and swim to places that would have been off-limits before.

Based on this unlocking guide, I started with Zhao Yun’s musou mode and beat the first battle fairly easily. The second one, where you have to escort Liu Bei and some peasants to the docks was a lot tougher though, and I’ve failed it twice so far. First time because I ran off to protect some peasants but wound up losing all of them, and the second time because Liu Bei decided to take the long way around the map and I just lost too much health to attrition.

Maybe I should level him up a bit more in Free Mode before continuing on in Musou mode. Or maybe actually read the manual for once…

This Post Is Not About Crysis

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Since The Witcher is on hold, I thought I’d get back to a more action-oriented game, and hey, whaddaya know, I already had Crysis installed and patched up. I’d played it briefly before, but only far enough to get through the first couple firefights, still in the tutorial really.

When I fired it up though, the cursor was behaving oddly at the main menu. Its position on the screen was a bit to the lower-right of where it thought it was, making it hard to click on specific spots. It was still bounded by the screen, and restricted from a bit of the left hand side of the screen, so there were some buttons that couldn’t be clicked at all.

Thinking that I might have goofed up the install somehow by accidentally running the patch for a second time (I wasn’t sure if it was already applied or not), I uninstalled, reinstalled, and repatched Crysis. And, while waiting on those steps to finish, I got in a bit more time with N+.

I made it through another five episodes tonight and most of them were uneventful, except for episode 14, the first real sign that the difficulty curve is ramping up. Level 14-2 took a good dozen or so attempts since there was one vertical shaft where I had to bounce from wall to wall all the way up, but there were mines on the wall and they were close enough together that there was little margin for error, so you had to pull off the whole sequence of walljumps perfectly. Each time I tried, I went straight for that shaft first since there was no point in wasting time on the other, easier ones if I was going to botch it on that one anyway.

Then, level 14-4 was the real torture test, being one of those levels where you’re chased by missiles nearly non-stop. The slightest hesitation, all too easily caused by landing in just the wrong spot or getting too close and grabbing a wall instead of falling, and the missiles get you. It’s stopped from being too frustrating by there being a real sense of progression as you keep trying, though. First you can’t figure out how to reliably drop onto the ledge with the door key without falling into the pit of mines below. Then you figure out how to do that more or less reliably, but keep hitting a slope and falling into the pit as you try to get out. Then you learn how to slow your jump to avoid hitting the slope and can get off that ledge reliably, but can’t make it up to the upper keys without getting hit by the missiles. Then you figure out how to weave through the ledges to avoid the missiles, but get caught by them when you slow down to get a key. Then you learn how to get close enough to touch the key without slowing down too much, but aren’t sure how to turn around and get the other key. And so on… Victory was eventually mine though, and with it the achievement for completing 15 episodes.

Eventually, the Crysis reinstall finished, but the cursor still behaved strangely. Running out of ideas, I poked around the menus a bit, and restarted it in DX9 mode just for kicks (the default is DX10, apparently), and tada, it worked fine again. I just installed Vista SP1 on this system, and it does mess with DX10 a bit (mainly to add DX10.1), so maybe it’s involved here. Edit: Turns out it’s not an SP1 problem, but just a Crysis bug when the desktop and game resolutions don’t match. It’s fine now that they’ve been set to the same.

Oh well, DX9 is good enough for me for now, but by this point it was too late to kick off a new game anyway. I don’t like to start it only to have to quit while it’s still halfway through the tutorial.

XBLA Wednesday

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The XNA community and sample games were revealed today, so I had to give some of them a whirl. JellyCar is a weird little game, where you have to ‘drive’ a car forwards and backwards over various obstacles to reach the finish. The twist is that the physics are extremely rubbery — your car bounces around easily, and can be easily crushed, squished, and stretched by the obstacles, making it a fight just to keep it under control.

The other one I tried was The Dishwasher, which is a really well done side-scrolling fighter with a fairly distinctive style. It’s not really my preferred genre though, and I think I beat the sample level only because I had it on easy.

Today was also the release day for N+, which is the 360 port of a free Flash game (which you can get here). The graphics are only slightly improved, but the important part is that the gameplay is perfectly intact and the controls are still smooth with the analog stick. There are also all-new levels, some new multiplayer modes, and a level editor that’ll let you share your levels.

I did the first ten single-player episodes (of 45) tonight without too much trouble, with only a small handful that I had to repeat more than once. I’m sure it’ll get a lot tougher though, as the original game was infamous for its brutal difficulty in the later levels.

Music For The Messes

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So, with The Witcher on hold, I need a new primary game. But not tonight — tonight is for…music!

The DLC pack for Rock Band is pretty good this week. El Scorcho (Weezer) is a really easy song, but still pretty fun to play. I even got 100% on it, albeit still on Medium, but I rarely get 100% on anything. Why Do You Love Me (Garbage) is a pretty good song and a bit tougher, with actual chords, but I almost managed to 100% it if not for a screwup on the last half-dozen notes. Sex Type Thing (Stone Temple Pilots) is a classic, and the most challenging of the bunch, with more variety in transitions and power chords.

I also went back and beat my previous scores on a handful of songs like Outside, Ten Speed (Of God’s Blood and Burial), Pleasure (Pleasure), and Go With The Flow, though I can still only get four stars on that last one. Way too many long sets of repeated notes on which it’s easy to break the combo.

After that I spent a bit more time in Audiosurf, mainly in Sonic Youth songs, where I took some of the slower ones from Rather Ripped in order to get the Stainless achievement. Unfortunately, even though I’ve added a bunch of friends’ names, the friend score servers are down right now. Even when they’re working though, it doesn’t keep a very long list of the songs they’ve played, so it’s tough to try and find songs on which you can try to beat them.

Revenge Is Sweet

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I also took another crack at Culdcept Saga tonight and finally beat the first board, this time with just over 5000 magic versus her 2000. I pretty much did it the same way she did to me last time, too — I built up a well-defended square to level 4, and she landed on it twice, costing her a huge amount and forcing her to sell off a lot of her properties.

Luck still plays a huge role in these early boards, but hopefully it won’t be too long before I’ll have a more powerful card deck. I’ve seen recommendations that I should be playing some short ‘versus’ games as well just to build up my deck, rather than just sticking to the main campaign.

Sounds More Dangerous Than A Snowstorm

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The only major bit tonight was finally getting around to trying the Bladestorm demo on the 360, mainly just to free up some disk space. It was taking up a whopping 1.9 gigs of space, and I want at least 6-7 free before trying one of the HD movie rentals.

It’s reminiscent of Dynasty Warriors in that you fight large-scale battles on huge battlefields against numerous enemies, which isn’t all that surprising since it’s by the same studio. Instead of controlling a single legendary Chinese super-warrior though, you’re an unknown mercenary in the era of the 100 Years War between the English and French, and you control squads of other troops in battles since you’re rather ineffective on your own.

There’s some character-building to it, since your effectiveness over different types of squads (swordsmen, cavalry, archers, pikemen, etc.) depends on what books you’ve acquired and how you spend skill points within those books, though you don’t really see a lot of that in the demo.

The actual combat itself was pretty fun — if you take a cavalry squad. Whereas it’s exciting to take your squad of horses and charge and sweep them through enemy ranks, it’s somewhat less interesting to take a squad of swordsmen and watch them kind of get lost in the big blur of battle, and archers require a lot more coordination.

It’s an interesting game, but one I probably won’t have time for. Dynasty Warriors 6 will probably be the one I go to for my big battlefield carnage fix.

Oh Right, That 360 Thing

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A new DLC pack came out for GripShift today, so I figured I’d spend a bit more time on the 360 again. Unfortunately the GripShift pack is rather disappointing — there aren’t any new puzzles, the races that it adds aren’t the game’s main focus anyway, and the minigames are interesting for a bit but have no long-term appeal or even any real reward.

I also picked up Culdcept Saga today, which is kind of like Monopoly combined with Magic: The Gathering. I mentioned playing the demo before and I kinda-sorta liked it, but discussion on some forums piqued my interest even further. There’s some story surrounding it about my character selling himself into slavery for the good of his village and being confronted by some other people who babble on about cards and fate and such, but it’s really just an excuse to get to the next board and do battle.

Unfortunately, so far, I suck at it. I lost on the very first board, after getting a poor starting hand and first few draws (useless creatures that had no attack score, and useless spells meant for the late game), some bad choices on creature summons, and landing on the enemy’s only ultra-high-‘rent’ square and being unable to beat it, which forced me to sell off almost all of my properties.

Luck still plays a really huge role, especially this early on before I can even assemble my own decent deck, but at least there’s no penalty for losing a match and you even still gain some cards. Hopefully the next attempt will go better…

Just Watch Out For Roaming Charges

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Today was another Rock Band DLC day, of course, and initially I was only really interested in the B-52s song (“Roam”), since it’s a fun little pop song that’ll be more appealing to groups of players. There was also a Faith No More song (“We Care A Lot”), but I couldn’t remember how it went until I remembered that it’s also the Dirty Jobs opening theme, and I picked that one up as well. They’re both pretty decent on guitar — not too outlandish or complex, but not too boring or easy either.

While I was at it I figured I’d work on the hard solo career a bit more as well, and finished Black Hole Sun, Reptilia, and Epic, and didn’t do too badly for a change, with two four-stars and one five-star. I failed miserably at Suffragette City and Main Offender, though — rapid transitions to and from chords and up and down scales simultaneously just throw me off. This is probably the first point at which I’m really going to have to start practicing songs before I can even finish them.

And then to cap things off I did a handful of songs on bass in quickplay mode, on the hard difficulty since the basslines tend to be easier than the lead guitar anyway. One thing that annoys me is that it doesn’t easily list your quickplay score along with the tracks, so I’m never sure which songs I’ve already played and which ones I haven’t done yet. I have to go to the leaderboards for that, but the extra menu navigation is annoying and the leaderboards lag behind a bit anyway.

Quick Wrap-Ups

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It didn’t take too long to finish off Sam & Max 202 tonight. There was only one part that I thought was a little unfair and had to poke around a bit for a hint (there was no indication you could create or control red portals!), but after that it was fairly straightforward to get to the end. Again, not as funny as I would have expected, but the puzzles were decent enough.

After that I took another shot at Rez HD, and made it through area 5. It was the first boss in the series of end bosses that gave me the most trouble last time, but I knew what to expect now and it went a lot more smoothly, and I was able to remain in at least Buddha form or above.

Beating the main game opened up more score attack modes and bonus areas, and I took a shot at the ‘lost area’, but died about 3/4 of the way through. It gets a lot tougher towards the end, but I was also experimenting with maintaining combos for scoring than surviving. It’s not a very long game, but there’s plenty of potential replay in these score attack and bonus areas, at least.

With those two now (mostly) out of the way, I should be able to focus more on STALKER again…