The night before, I'd gathered together a smorgasbord of games to choose from. I wanted to concentrate on games that I'd picked up cheaply and then not played, or not played much, rather than triple A titles that I knew to be good - basically, I was looking for hidden gems. There was also a pile of PS1 games I'd recently picked up cheaply from Gamestation. Frankly, I'd need a month off.
Some of them were half completed, some fully completed but with unplayed DLC, some were unstarted, some were even in their shrinkwrap! Obviously I couldn't play them all but between taking my daughter to school and picking her up, I had a fair bash at it.
I started off with Flatout: Ultimate Carnage on 360. A fairly interesting racing game that I've gone back to a couple of times since. Its USP is the destructible scenery that surrounds the track and that 'works' quite well - debris is strewn across the track, explosions explode attractively. I, however, royally sucked at it - good fun but not successful fun.
I then moved on to The Simpsons Game, on 360. This game got slated when it was released 18 months or so ago (genuinely funny but lacking in gameplay, is what I remember from the reviews) but I quite enjoyed it. It made me laugh out loud (and I can't say that about many games) at times and the gameplay, although essentially a formulaic collect-a-thon, was engaging in a low impact type of way. I've also played this one a few times since but my most recent save, about 5 hours in, was corrupted (my 360 has been misbehaving of late). I don't think I can face starting again any time soon, so that might be that for videogame Springfield.
The next game from the Pile of Shame was Half Life 2, Episode 2, from the Orange Box on 360. I didn't really give this a chance. I've never played any Half Life game before and I felt out of touch with the story, jumping in when I did. I also accepted that it wasn't a 'random game day' game - the reviews suggest it is too good for that and, as I was on a schedule, I couldn't devote sufficient time to it. Out of the disc tray it went and in came...
Fable 2. I love Fable 2, it is one of my favourite games of this generation. I've played it through to completion once and have bought and played through all of the DLC but only with a 'good' character. I've often wondered how Albion would different if I was evil, so I decided to give that a bash. The answer was....a bit different, certainly in Bowerstone Old Town after I didn't give the arrest warrants to the guard when a child. And I finally got the shoot-a-sweet-innocent-bunny achievement, 'The Hunter' (5 blood-stained GP for that). The story seems to be progressing as it did in my 'good' play through but I haven't played it enough yet to know how different it will be after 10 or 20 hours of play.
I then moved on to Brutal Legend, that I'd picked up the week before. As with The Simpsons, it was genuinely funny and engaging enough to be interesting even though I have little interest in the heavy metal music that the game is based around. And Jack Black proves once again (as with Kung Fu Panda), that he is far more bearable (Be Kind, Rewind excepted) in animated form that in real time.
No time to get too settled though. Out with Jack Black and in with videogame artiste extraordinary, Nolan North, this time in Prince of Persia. This was a present for Christmas 2008 and I'd played it through at the time (and enjoyed it). A DLC epilogue was released, which I downloaded but I never got around to playing it. Unfortunately, the year away from the game had made me forget the key configuration - control was a big problem for me, jumping in, as the DLC does, at the end of the game (i.e. the game anticipates a fair degree of competence on the part of the player, a competence that I no longer had). I'll probably go back to PoP another day, though.
Next on the list was an old PS2 game, ObsCure. It is a survival horror game set in a US high school - archetypal slasher movie fare. Although last gen, graphically the game stood up quite well, I thought and I enjoyed the 'feel' of the game, which was like early (seasons 1-3) Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies were still at high school. I didn't want to get too far into the story mode of the game (and I'd inadvertently let a major character get killed too) but I will definitely be returning to it, particularly as I understand (http://24hourgamer.blogspot.com/2010/02/oh-my-god-they-killed-kenny.html) that it doesn't take too long to finish.
After going last gen, I then decided to go last-last gen and started playing Incredible Crisis, a PS1 game of indeterminate genre. The game is a difficult one to describe. Ostensibly, it is about a Japanese family's day, after discovering that it was Grandma's (forgotten) birthday over breakfast. But that doesn't do the game justice. In the small portion I played (not from time constraints, just because it was bloody hard), I played as the Sararīman father doing a dance routine at his office that was then broken up by a rogue wrecking ball crashing through the wall of his office building and chasing him down the corridor. All the time to a soundtrack of Japanese ska music (which was just as fantastic as the idea sounds). One other point to note, I played it both on my PS3 (connected to my HDTV via HDMI) and my PS2 (connected to the same via a s-video cable) and it looked better on the PS2.
The afternoon school run was fast approaching and I only had a time left for a quick blast of Pinball FX on 360 (a great pinball sim, which I recommend to anyone with an interest them).
What a fantastic day!
I then moved on to Brutal Legend, that I'd picked up the week before. As with The Simpsons, it was genuinely funny and engaging enough to be interesting even though I have little interest in the heavy metal music that the game is based around. And Jack Black proves once again (as with Kung Fu Panda), that he is far more bearable (Be Kind, Rewind excepted) in animated form that in real time.
No time to get too settled though. Out with Jack Black and in with videogame artiste extraordinary, Nolan North, this time in Prince of Persia. This was a present for Christmas 2008 and I'd played it through at the time (and enjoyed it). A DLC epilogue was released, which I downloaded but I never got around to playing it. Unfortunately, the year away from the game had made me forget the key configuration - control was a big problem for me, jumping in, as the DLC does, at the end of the game (i.e. the game anticipates a fair degree of competence on the part of the player, a competence that I no longer had). I'll probably go back to PoP another day, though.
Next on the list was an old PS2 game, ObsCure. It is a survival horror game set in a US high school - archetypal slasher movie fare. Although last gen, graphically the game stood up quite well, I thought and I enjoyed the 'feel' of the game, which was like early (seasons 1-3) Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies were still at high school. I didn't want to get too far into the story mode of the game (and I'd inadvertently let a major character get killed too) but I will definitely be returning to it, particularly as I understand (http://24hourgamer.blogspot.com/2010/02/oh-my-god-they-killed-kenny.html) that it doesn't take too long to finish.
After going last gen, I then decided to go last-last gen and started playing Incredible Crisis, a PS1 game of indeterminate genre. The game is a difficult one to describe. Ostensibly, it is about a Japanese family's day, after discovering that it was Grandma's (forgotten) birthday over breakfast. But that doesn't do the game justice. In the small portion I played (not from time constraints, just because it was bloody hard), I played as the Sararīman father doing a dance routine at his office that was then broken up by a rogue wrecking ball crashing through the wall of his office building and chasing him down the corridor. All the time to a soundtrack of Japanese ska music (which was just as fantastic as the idea sounds). One other point to note, I played it both on my PS3 (connected to my HDTV via HDMI) and my PS2 (connected to the same via a s-video cable) and it looked better on the PS2.
The afternoon school run was fast approaching and I only had a time left for a quick blast of Pinball FX on 360 (a great pinball sim, which I recommend to anyone with an interest them).
What a fantastic day!
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