I didn't know what hit me

It really was an instant switch. I'd changed from loving my DS to pieces to having the stark realisation that I wasn't using it for any other reason than the simple fact that it was there. I decided on the Monday morning, sold the games within two days, the DS itself within a week and then treated myself to a new monitor, something which was becoming sorely needed in the little room that the PC lives in.

So any portable games I play are now done so solely on my phone. It's something that my C500 is very good at. Whilst it can handle basic 3D very well indeed, games on the move for me have always needed to be turn-based affairs. I'm always too distracted by what's happening outside the car/train/plane/personal space to be able to get truly engrossed in games on portable systems, so something I can look away from without having to check the pause button works very well indeed. As the Windows Mobile arena is swamped with decent freeware adaptations of puzzle, board and card games, I'm very much set up for quite a while. I also have a copy of Redshift's Legacy to complete yet, so gaming on the go won't entirely fizzle out for me yet.

BIA:RTH30 really isn't getting any easier, although a restart of the troublesome level from last week cured some of my ills. It's still very good indeed, but requires more time than I'm able to give it at the moment. It's one of these titles that needs your full attention for a minimum of an hour at a time, which is something I'm only able to give once or twice a week. Progress will be made, believe me, but it may be slow.

In the meantime, quick gaming sessions are being catered for courtesy of PGR2 (still) and Need For Speed Most Wanted (which is another title I've yet to complete). As I treat racers more like sandbox titles I'm not really concerned about "completing" them, but to do so would be nice as I'm almost a month into my challenge and nothing yet's been ticked off the list (except the DS stuff, natch).

The new PC monitor has had me gaming in the box-room again. I'd let Call of Duty tail off a few months ago, with around a 50% completion ratio, but the new monitor's inspired me to get that finished. Once that's done I can get on with the job of sorting out Jack Carver's predicament in Far Cry.

The "game in the background" on the PC over the weekend has been GT Legends. This is (already) possibly my favourite serious racer ever. Effectively assembled by a team who built up their fame by modding other people's games, it takes the handling engine of FIA:GTR and wraps it round much more user friendly cars. Instead of being dumped into a turbo-nutter bastich of a race car, things start much more sedately with your first races being in Mini Coopers and progress through such beauties as Jaguar E-Types and classic Corvettes.

It's Started Again!

No, not my buying habit, but the inability to concentrate on one thing at a time. To be fair, I blame Gearbox. If they hadn't have made Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 so god-damn hard or if they'd have incorporated a "load from last checkpoint" that didn't involve having to wait 2 minutes just to get back into the same bit of the game you passed 90 seconds ago then I wouldn't be currently working my way through Project Gotham Racing 2 and instead would be continuing my ongoing mission to clear out various French villages and help the Allies.

BIA:RtH30 truly is a great infantry game. I've hinted at the similarities between it and Full Spectrum Warrior before but in truth it goes much much further. Being able to actually aim the crosshair yourself that will take down the last bit of resistance in an area, ensuring your reinforcements will be able to have a comfortable landing, is a massive step up from merely commanding your squads via a floating camera. The graphics are widescreen, the sound is incredible but the game's just too darn tricky. I'm currently bogged down in a section where random artillery drops are taking me out every third retry. I know there's a way round it but I'll be buggered if I can see it. :-/

PGR2, as you probably know, is a completely different kettle of fish. This was released to tremendous applause in 2003 and makes for one of the outright best racers going. Somtimes very pretty, sometimes unbelievably ugly but pretty much always nice to play. Sega fanbois berated the removal of the Kudos gambling system but seeing as Bizarre did such a good job at setting the platinum targets (which are always so tangible yet so far out of reach), I can't say I had any problem with that whatsoever. I originally turned it on one evening last week to play a bit of Geometry Wars by way of a breather from getting shelled to bits in BIA and it's barely been out of the Xbox since.

I'd played the game through in full to Gold levels when it was first released whilst reviewing it for Racesimcentral. A nasty incident involving Microsoft wiping my hard drive meant my game save was lost and I barely played it again. Consequently I'm working through as if it were my first time, yet the fact that I've been here before isn't detracting from my enjoyment one little bit. Some races are annoying, sure (you don't enjoy the American Muscle series, you ENDURE it), but most of the time PGR2 is about as good as it gets when looking at racers coded for fun over realism. Something that really hits you is just how much there is to do. There's (from memory) 14 or so challenge series, then 3 rounds of 120 challenges and 113 cars to collect. That's not including the weekly and monthly challenges set down by Bizarre and the possibility of playing online any time day or night. Fantastic stuff.

As you may have gathered from all the above, I'm really not having much of a problem with the "ban". It's actually been quite liberating as I'm fully free to enjoy what I already have and it's totally taken my mind off anything that's coming up. Having said that, we're only in January ;-)

It's not going to be long before my next update as I need to let you know why I sold my DS :-D

Keeping up with the Joneses

Well here's a nice little piece of commentary that sums up pretty much the exact ethos
behind why I've set out on my project.  Half the games I bought last year weren't
bought because I really wanted them, but because other people were buying them at
the same time and I thought (rightly or wrongly) that I'd be "missing out" by not
buying my way in at the same time.  Whilst this sort of thinking may be "perfectly
natural", it's not a pattern that I want to fall into and so that's why I've embarked
on my little journey.

Long time no speaky!

Howdy all and sundry! Welcome to 2006 and whatever other greetings are usually forwarded at this sort of annual time.

Sorry for the lack of writings for the last month but things have been a little hectic and yet somewhat relaxed over Xmas (feck it, I was off having a good time without having to worry about noting it all down).

Anyway, I’m a week into the ban now and to be honest, I’m totally ambivalent towards it so far. A couple of freeware games have tempted me slightly and someone took great pleasure in reminding me I’m going to be missing out on the DS version of Age of Empires but apart from that things have been going swimmingly. Somewhat worse than the upcoming release list has been looking over stuff I’m going to have to wait yet another year to catch up on. There are quite a few titles on my wishlist that I’d like to have known I could play this year, but alas, I’m going to have to leave things like Lost in Blue, Phoenix Wright, Ouendan, Touch Golf, Metroid Pinball, Bad Day LA until next year now.

Xmas yielded a relatively modest (for me) crop of games. I grabbed a 98p copy of Timesplitters 2 from the Game sale and presents turned up in the shape of Space Rangers, GTA Double Pack, Call of Cthulhu & Brothers In Arms Earned In Blood. Six new games. On their own they’ll probably represent 100-150 hours of gaming. As I tend not to play for more than around ten hours a week you can see why I’m having such a dilemma about picking up new content. Over the weekend I intend to post a definitive list of what’s in the collection, along with indications of “play-ed-ness” (so what, it’s not a real word, get over it!) and will then continue to update as to my progress through the pile.

Xmas was dominated by two games in particular this year: Brothers in Arms Road to Hill 30 and Animal Crossing Wild World. The former has been a real treat, as although it has different developers behind it, it’s essentially nothing more than a follow-up and improvement on the cracking 2004 title, Full Spectrum Warrior. BIA takes the concepts introduced in FSW and applies them to a WWII setting whilst affording the giving the player his own character to use. By altering your point of few from that of a floating camera to that of a soldier the immersiveness is increased tenfold. If you truly do have great first-person skills then you can be a real asset to your fellow troops and help them out where getting to a flanking position seems all too difficult for them. The unlockables being released at the end of every mission is probably the only bad point thus far, being something that only serves to remind you you’re sat on your couch and not scraping mud off your boots following another successful set of maneuvers.

Animal Crossing’s a strange beast. It’s been suggested that it’s nothing more than “The Sims by Nintendo” but there’s definitely more to it than that. It really does represent its own little world and the fact that it runs from its own calendar of events only serves to drag you into your weird little town all the more.

In other news this season, my PC room got tidied, a new style DS got hinted at by “the Regginator” and Microsoft announced that they are in fact releasing an HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. Fascinating times, eh?