Gamer's Diary - February 4, 2009

I played some more Silent Hill Homecoming and beat the first boss. I did consult a walkthrough to do it. I would never have guessed the monster's weakness otherwise. Ironically, the very next time I restarted the boss battle, the loading screen also revealed that weakness.

Sean "Elysium" Sands on the Gamers with Jobs podcast recommended Mona: The Assassin, a professionally produced mod for Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. I'd already given away my PC copy of MP2, so I shut down Ubuntu, booted Windows, and downloaded it from Steam ($10 USD). I then downloaded and installed the mod, and played a half hour of it.

It has the same vibe as Max Payne 2, and all that good bullet-time shootdodging action. There are no plot-moving comic-book cutscenes, but that's understandable considering that this is a free mod. I'll be playing more of this in the future.

Gamer's Diary - Max Payne 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Perfect Dark

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne: I ordered this (cheap!) as part of my campaign to replace my PC games with console versions. I found it in my mailbox Sunday, so of course I popped it in to the 360 to see if the game had scratches or data errors, to see if it would run on the 360, and to re-acquaint myself with one of my old favorites.

The disk had a pristine surface and no errors, it played flawlessly in emulation, and I enjoyed an hour of stepping into the shoes of my old friend Max.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance: My random game picker came up with this for its second choice; first it chose a Japanese RPG that would have required more time and brainpower than I wanted to put in.

I put in the 360 version (I also have it for PS2, because I play online co-op with a friend who has it for PS2 as well) and quickly discovered that I didn't have much progress in it. So I started over. I enjoyed playing as Wolverine for an hour, then put it away for another time, satisfied with my progress.

Perfect Dark: On Monday the picker chose this after several unsuitable titles. Playing this on my dusty Nintendo 64 reminded me of just how much developers can get out of limited hardware. I completed much of the Carrington Institute training and the first two levels of the campaign, and had plenty of fun doing it.

The graphics, of course, don't hold a candle to anything current, the limitations of the Nintendo 64 controller make playing a first-person shooter a bit awkward at times, and the voice acting didn't impress, but the overall gameplay still offers a lot of fun and the story promises interesting twists.