Thursday, July 24, 2008

Gamer's Diary - Crackdown, Puzzle Quest, GRID

Crackdown: Having beaten the final crime, I set about going after the achievements I mentioned in my last post. I got to the top of the Agency Tower, and I got all my skills to four stars. Then I shelved the game.

I found scaling the tower repeatedly to get the water jump achievement and grinding my skills to max tedious. So I put the game away (for eventual replay - it has lots of fun in it), and found another to put in my playlist: Perfect Dark Zero.

Puzzle Quest: Another hour of grinding roadside encounters, and I'd had enough. I still only have level 23, and need level 26 (25 if my luck is good) to progress on the main quest and some of the side quests. I still had fun with it, but I really wanted to play something else.

GRID: I have reverted to my old racing game tactics. If it looks like I'm going to lose a race, I restart it. Since GRID has no car tuning options (like DiRT and TOCA Race Driver), engineering my way to victory is not an option as it is in series like Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport, and Need for Speed.

By restarting I was able to win both of the demolition derby races, and claim the gold cup for the event. Next up, the Tuned Pro event.

A comment on GRID's design: while it has licenses as does theGran Turismo franchise, it doesn't have GT's tedious and frustrating license tests to get them. Instead, I get licenses by winning races. I like to play to race, and this satisfies that urge. This has, like Forza, much more fun in it than the artificial skill tests in GT (license tests) and Project Gotham (kudos).

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