Gamer's Diary - GRID, Battlestar Galactica, Black

GRID: Thursday evening I played some more, enough to win the Tuned Pro event. My strategy of restarting races until I win each race in an event continues to work well. But I've become tired of playing the same game too long, and so I've started picking a different game each time I sit down to play.

Battlestar Galactica: Before I talk about it, I should mention which one I played. I played the game released in 2003 for the Xbox and PS2, a space fighter simulator along the lines of Star Wars Starfighter or Wing Commander Prophecy, not the arcade game released for Xbox Live Arcade and PC in 2007.

I didn't put it in meaning to play it for any length of time; I wanted only to verify something I'd noticed before, that engine exhaust flares were incorrectly rendered in the Xbox 360's emulation. I ended up spending a good hour with the game anyway, because I was having fun trying to beat a mission.

Beyond that, I also ran the test I meant to; I played the game on both my original Xbox and my Xbox 360, and discovered that the 360 does in fact misrender exhaust flares. On the Xbox they appear white, as you'd expect, but on the 360 they appear black with a fuzzy white outline. I find it slightly distracting, but have no doubt that once I get used to it I'll stop noticing it altogether.

Black: Since I currently want not to play the same game for any length of time, I needed to pick a new one to play Saturday. I picked randomly from my playlist, and approved of the first one I found: Black. This game has lots of explosions, lots of shooting, and lots of destruction hung on a fairly thin plot. I think it's just the thing to relax with and turn off one's brain, like a fun action movie.

EA released Black to mixed reviews. While reviewers liked the things I've mentioned about it, they also criticized it for its lack of story depth, lack of any hint of multiplayer, and short length. None of those things bothered me about it; I don't care that much about multiplayer, I think too many games get artificially lengthened to satisfy those vocal players with an excess of free time, and a game about shooting things and blowing things up needs about as much plot justification as a pornographic movie. The developers called Black "gun porn" for a reason.

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).

Gamer's Diary - GRID, Puzzle Quest

GRID - I beat the demo derby event, but haven't won both races yet. I have still a little to do there before I move on to the next event.

Puzzle Quest - I keep grinding away. When I reach level 24, I can rejoin the main quest.

Gamer's Diary - GRID

Doing better. Fourth place in the Michigan Demolition Derby. I think I have figured out the secret: Treat it like a regular race instead of an opportunity to smash cars (as fun as I might find that). The more I concentrate on crashing cars the farther back in the pack I finish.

Gamer's Diary - Cars, Legos, and Gems, Oh My!

GRID - I completed the goal I had set for myself - three consecutive wins in the Muscle Car Classic event. Having done that, I considered myself ready to participate in other events.

Mistake.

None of what I had learned in the first event prepared me for the next one - a demolition derby. I found myself constantly getting lost on the figure-8 track, bringing up the rear of the pack, and getting pulped by the other drivers. I only finished 11th out of 12 because one of the other drivers crashed out of the race.

Having learned my lesson, in future I will race an event until I win it, then move on to the next. Perfecting performance in one event does nothing to improve overall game prowess.

Lego Indiana Jones - J--- wanted to play with her Webkinz but Mom needed to use the laptop, so I offered to play Lego Indiana Jones with her. We played through the Nepal level, and found that we progressed through the level much faster when we focussed on it rather than loitering and trying to get all the studs and bonuses.

Like the Lego Star Wars games, this one can be played by kids and adults together, with tons of fun to be had by both.

Puzzle Quest - I thought that I had finished playing for the evening, but then my oh-so-lovely cat Bonnie decided at one in the morning that the time had come for me to play with her, and chose to let me know by dragging her favorite feather toy up onto the bed and meowing loudly in my face.

Bonnie's head: pop off or twist off? At that moment, I would have liked to find out.

Unable to return to sleep right away, I fired up the 360 and played Puzzle Quest for a while. I have seen forum posts complaining that enemies seem overly lucky in the game, or that they seem to have advance knowledge of what gems will fall. Playing it, I can see where they might think that, but I think they fail to notice all the times when the player gets similarly lucky.

I noticed while playing that sticking with story line quests results in the game pitting me against enemies that have a significantly higher level and better stats than me. It set me - a level 19 warrior - against a level 24 orc. I lost. Badly.

This means I will have to spend time grinding levels by performing minor quests and fighting road bandits, in order to get strong enough to fight the orc lord's guard. Ordinarily I would find such levelling tedious. But the fun nature of the combat means I will enjoy it instead. So, no biggie.

Gamer's Diary - GRID

Played the Muscle Car Classic and won both of its races handily. I've won this event twice in a row now. Once more and I'll move on to other events. What can I say? GRID still thrills.

Gamer's Diary - Never Again I'll Go Sailing, GRID

After consulting a walkthrough and some forumites (forummers? forumians?), I came to the conclusion that Star Ocean: Till The End of Time has the hero spend the bulk of the game on medieval-level planets and stripped of his own starfaring culture's technology. It sprinkles some sci-fi in here and there, with a chunk at the beginning and another, larger one at the end, but for the most part it consists of straight-up swords-and-sorcery.

So into the archives it goes. I'll play it when I have no other games worth playing.

Now, as for GRID... it'll take a long time to get tired of that one. I did not have a lot of play time, so I ran the Muscle Car Classic again, and won handily. Tons of fun.

Gamer's Diary - Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Friends

Last night, feeling better, I looked for a game to enjoy. I considered all the trailers I'd been watching, all the games I own that I'd love to play again, and chose ... GRID.

Yeah, I chose the same new game I just started playing. Why? First, it doesn't require much in the way of brainpower. Second, I can play it in short sessions (like other racing games). Third, and most important, it rocks. Hard.

Not only did I choose the same game, I chose to run the same event again ... and again ... and again. I cannot win the Muscle Car Classic consistently yet, and I have so much fun with that two-race event that even if the game consisted entirely of that, I would still have many hours of enjoyment. It doesn't matter to me that doing so makes me go through season after season without any real progress in the game. I'm having too much fun.

Gamer's Diary - GRID, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness

GRID

The kid had a softball game Thursday night (tie game and she caught a pop fly for an out), so instead of happily co-op-ing on Lego Indiana Jones, I had the flat to myself. I looked at my evening's agenda, and it had one word on it: GRID.

I spent several hours with it, interrupted only by supper and DVR'ed Battlestar Galactica, and I had a blast.

Simulation purists (or as I like to call them, sim snobs) may kvetch about the lack of perfect accuracy in the car physics and damage modelling. "Cry me a river," says I. It's fun, and it feels realistic enough to impart the sensation that I'm racing against other drivers, and that we're all beating the crap out of each other. And that's where it's at.

Let's face it - if all were simulated perfectly, most of us normal humans wouldn't be able to get the cars off the starting line, much less keep them on the track or win races. No, what we want is a physics and damage model accurate enough to make the game feel real, while forgiving enough to make it accessible to mortals. And that, GRID delivers.

Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness

Last weekend, I picked up a couple of titles in my continuing quest to replace my PC games with console equivalents. One was Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, which performed much as I expected. The graphics weren't as pretty on the Xbox, but the gameplay was just as good. The other was Angel of Darkness.

Yeesh. More like Angel of Suckness.

I remember playing TRAoD on the PC when it came out, and being puzzled by the low reviews. I set the PC controls to the Lara-relative movement scheme, as I was familiar with it from all the other Tomb Raider games. With that scheme, it played very much like those games. No problem.

But then last weekend I played the PS2 version, and I understood where all the bad reviews came from. There were crappy textures. There were low-poly models. There was slowdown in inexplicable places. Controlling Lara was like trying to thread a needle while wearing catcher's mitts on both hands. And all this was apparent in the first five minutes of play.

Unlike the PC version, it isn't possible to choose a different control scheme; the player is locked into a camera-relative one. That would be okay if she reacted instantly and smoothly to inputs, as she does in Legend and Anniversary. Instead she very slowly turns to face in the direction the player pushes the stick, and then begins to run flat-out. This is particularly annoying when, for instance, one is trying to get her to turn around for a jump. Typically she will turn around, then instantly run off the edge to her doom. Engaging the walk function doesn't help, as she won't turn around with it engaged. And all that's just for starters.

By the time I'd gotten her to the roof, I was ready to throw the controller through the TV screen. Now I'm astonished that the review scores weren't lower. It's an unplayable mess.