Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Play Delayed : Episode 2 - 2

Old School Sunday 24/07/2011

All day I had been playing Marvel vs Capcom 2 it seemed, I was playing with a friend online when I woke up, the matches were going in my favor towards the end and I had developed a bit of a winning streak! Then, when player 2 came over (it was a little bit earlier than normal) we played some more of it. But this time we played on xbox classic and it did not work out too well for me this time. Fist of all, the XBLA version comes with all the characters unlocked right out of the gate, so when I switched on the original I found that I was without Juggernaut as my back up character - some background : I like to have juggernaut as support, when I tag him in for moves he rushes across the screen and freight train's who ever gets in his way! I'm not sure if this is the best way to play but I like to have a fast, attacking character, like Venom and maybe another fast character or a projectile character, like Jill Valentine from Resident Evil and then have a slower but more powerful character to back me up. I have a few choices with this game, but I don't really like the Hulk's moves too much but when I was playing the xbox classic version I didn't have much choice but to go with him. I usually select the normal mode as well but I think player 2 selected the "simple" game mode (which may make the combos easier?) and ended up getting destroyed, round after round... But it was not until I switched to MVC 3 that things started to pick up for me.

I think that this is only the third time since the game came out that I had played, I had been meaning to but never got the chance. Following on from the second game, MVC 3 introduces and even wackier mismatch of characters and a more comic book look overall, which I personally really like. Player 2 I think had selected "normal" settings this time, but I got my revenge for earlier on. I kept to the same formula for this game, fast attacker, projectile and a big guy at the back for assists but I should start to mix up my play styles and learn some new formations soon or else I will be figured out.

During our pizza break we watched the WWE No Mercy pay per view tape. Just flicking through the matches we finally settled on Stone Cold Steve Austin vs Rikishi in a no holds barred match, not titles on the line, just for revenge as it was during the story where it was discovered that Rikishi had run Stone Cold over with a car and put him out for months as a result. A brilliant match from a pretty good era in wrestling history.

During the course of the night, on top of all the beat em up gaming, we played some of Kane and Lynch 2, co-op'ing the first level just to show player 2 what it was like, I was quite curious to see how it played compared to the first one. I had read in the press that it was a bit better than the first game, which I really liked and was curious to see how the story went on. I had already played this level but my friend had not... So we started, player 2 getting to see the gruesome torture scene at the start, then we began the gameplay with the chase. Player 2, who was not used to the controls or the gameplay style got lost a few times during the scene but I was patient and went back to help him a few times when needed. We finally caught up with the guy (after going through a few gun fights and learning about the exploding gas cans) and got treated to more graphic violence that only a Kane and Lynch games can give you. There is a cool video mechanic going on through the game that looks like you have a camera man following you during the story documenting your adventure with certain scenes of graphic violence blurred out to give you like a news report / underground video feel to it. I'm looking forward to the rest of this game and this time around I might give the multiplayer a go (assuming people are still playing).

To finish out the night we had a few rounds of Tekken 6. I was extremely rusty at this game but still got a few wins in, I will definitely have to practice this one again as I have forgotten some of my favorite character's moves and need to revisit them. That was the conclusion of this Old School Sunday report, hopefully next time we will play more games and hopefully soon. I am thinking of putting together a light schedule sometime for these gaming nights just to get a few games covered a night and to not end up playing the same games all the time...

What Have I been Playing...

I started to write this blog almost straight after I posted the last one (note : I am actually working on my next one, this blog is just horribly delayed!!) and there were a few games that I decided not to include in my last blog, mainly because I did not finish any upon starting them. I have only really tried out games that I had either bought or downloaded. The first game on the list is Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on the Gamecube. I tried this one out almost straight away as it was a second hand copy and the disc was a bit scratched up, a friend who was with me at the time kept telling me that this was not going to work, but I put it in and the disc still ran and was working fine! What do I say about it...? Well, its a 3D sonic game, I have never played any of these properly and this one kinda portrays Sonic as a bit of an adrenaline junkie, with the game starting off with him dropping in off a chopper on a snowboard and have you playing a snowboarding style game through a city that is built on hills. What messes me up the most about this game though is the game controls, is it old school controls? I’m no sure about this, I got the same thing when I recently revisited the first Killzone game. It seems to me that they changed the control system for the latest generation of games but I am a little worried that I will encounter the same thing going back through all my PS2 games that I have stocked up on. To be honest I don't quite know what to make of this game, its like part platformer with race levels that can also be unlocked for multiplayer levels to prolong playability... I'm not sure about this either? I was never really big in to the Gamecube, we always had on in the house but I was more in to PS2, I kinda felt like I let a whole genre of game develope and pass me by but I was never really in to platform games, early on (as far back as playstation one) I felt that these games were to obviously repetitive and this annoyed me and as a result I stopped playing them, I am just try to get a wider variety of knowledge on gaming as a whole by playing them...

I purchased Bastion on XBLA recently. I heard the name on a podcast but I was not really listening much to what they had to say about it (I had just gotten of work and was heading to the bus stop) past the point where they said it was interesting and fun. So I remembered that I had spare points on the store floating around on my account and decided to pick the game up. So its a very cool game from the offset. It has a narrator who sounds like he came out of a dodgy western movie who narrates all your moves (including when you fall to your death) and a level mechanic that sees the terrain fall from the sky and build it's self as you run through it. I got to a point where I was heading off to the Bastion its self (what ever that is, I'm not sure? but will eventually find out). There seems to be quite a lot of weapons in the early stages of the game, it's kinda cool that you get to use them so early on and I was given a chance to find out which ones suit my style of play and get used to them all, with the game letting you hold 2 at a time. I am just a bit worried that they are giving you too much at the start of the game and later on there will be nothing new for you to discover past opening up the story. The whole feel of the game is a bit [Legend of Zelda] or at least the parts that I have seen and played. I am hoping that it will be an enjoyable experience but all I will say at this point is "so far so good"...

I mentioned Kane and Lynch 2 already, I guess I have played the first level twice at this stage now and have died twice at the start of the second level during the first gun fight. I have heard that this is a short game and I have a copy for both PS3 and for my PC steam account, I am hoping to finish it on both formats... One from the PS2 next [God Hand]. I was quite happy with myself when I found, I may have actually shouted to myself when I found it in the shop (I was very hung over that day). So I got home and tried it out and can say from my brief look that this game is very silly, silly in a way that a Japanese game can be. It's set in the wild west and your character that you play as thinks the enemies that you go through are "cute", the hero possesses the power of the "god hand" in his right hand. This means that when you piss him off (represented by a nerve meter), his had starts to glow and he can pummel enemies down with more punches that Mr. Smith gave Neo towards in the train station towards the end of the first Matrix movie, he also dispatches his foes with wrestling moves, which although is very silly in it's context, is still and feature that I like a lot! Again, this was only a quick look to see if the disc worked, I don't know how or why this guy has the power of the "god hand" but I want to play this game so expect a journal of sorts of my play through sometime in the future...

I'm actually finding it hard to remember everything I tried out, [Bujingai : Sword Master] on PS2 was another that I tried out to see if it worked, I picked it up recently for the second time (my first copy did not work and I only found out months after I bought it... This really pissed me off and made me want to play the game even more! (perhaps I will start naming and shaming shops that have screwed me out of my money... ) So I aqquired another copy... You play as a female warrior and it plays like an early version of [Bayonetta] from the looks of it, what I though was really cool was that you are thrown straight in to the gameplay before the intro to the game even comes, giving you a small taste of the game play before your character runs off across the roof tops... I never really went for these arcadey style third person action games, games like the [Devil May Cry] series for example, but because I liked the design of them, I still got them (I have almost all the games in the Devil May Cry series!). I will still try to play this but I don’t think my reaction times are sharp enough for them and eventually I get overwhelmed by all the enemies coming at me, or there is a series of ledge jumps and wall runs to be done that I just can't seem to nail, these things that eventually piss me off and cause me to stop playing...

A Saturday in mid July I was out at the seaside getting drunk and a friend got it in to his head that we go to an arcade before we go drinking. I was looking for a Tekken or Street Fighter coin up to go against my friend but all they seemed to have was sit in racing games or light gun games, as an arcade it was pretty shit, with more focus on the slot machines downstairs as you go in the front door. In this country, there never was a great arcade culture. You finds small amusement places at the seasides or the odd machine here or there in a bowling alley or pool hall, cinema or airport, they are not as popular here as in other countries but I would like to go around arcades here sometime and do like a video diary, anyway, on this Saturday in particular we both tried out the Terminator Salvation movie, this was not my first time playing this but I suck at it anyway, I think my friend got further than me in the short time our coins would allow us play. Based on the movie starring Christian Bale (of whom I am a big fan) you play as a marine on the front line taking on waves of exoskeletons with guns that come at you, there are the iconic exoskeletons from the movie franchise, who will either attack you from standing or crawl at you and try to take you out and there was also from what I briefly got to see and also a track driven style cyborg with missile launchers that will fire twin missiles at you that you have to shot at before they hit you and damage you. The light gun attached to this game is pretty sweet! it looks like an assault rifle with attached grenade launcher, with a trigger button, a red button on the end of the weapon on the left side and a clip that you can click in to reload your weapon quickly. This was definitely the draw factor to the machine! The game is very playable but I did not get far and there was not much else about the machine that compelled me to pour my euro coins in to it. My friend (who is a different friend to Player 2 from the Old School Sunday reports - yes, I have friends...) also had a shot at a House of the Dead machine, I think it was [House of the dead 4], it had Uzi type guns attached to it, but it was not very responsive and my friend got destroyed very quickly and he got quite pissed off and alcohol was needed to calm him down...

I think I'm going to stop typing now, I have another blog on the way, 2 [Old School Sunday] reports from August for you all and more new games as well, I still have not finished off [Quantum Theory] yet, I did try! But the fire fight I am stuck on is still giving my trouble! Look out for the next blog, thank you for reading!