Consolation Prize

My best intentions lay in ruins, blown aside like dandelion seeds on the wind. I had intended to try and complete some of my back catalogue of games before fully embracing GTA IV when it’s released in a couple of weeks time, but today my resolve finally broke.

I caved in to the adverts, the comments from friends, and the need to have something to revive my flagging gaming spirit and purchased Mario Kart Wii. I’ve played every console version of Mario Kart dating back to the original (and some would say still the best) on the SNES (1992). I’ve always found them hugely enjoyable and behind the cute exterior and gimmicky power-ups lies the beating heart of a polished racing game.

Am I really expecting any major surprises in this iteration? Well, not really. Every new version tends to keep the excellent core gameplay mechanics whilst experimenting with a few new ideas, retaining the best aspects and fortunately ditching those elements that don’t quite work from previous versions. The most obvious gimmick this time around is the use of the Wiimote together with the bundled steering wheel peripheral and I’m intrigued to see how well this works.

Am I looking forward to playing it? Hell yeah!

While biding my time until the release of GTA 4 and not really wanting to start any new games at the present I’ve been revisiting some of my older unfinished games.
Forza Motorsport 2 was my first choice because generally racing games are perfect pick-up-and-play games. No matter how long ago you stopped playing there usually isn’t a critical storyline that has to be remembered, or button combos that have to be re-learned.

What I wasn’t counting on however was the game to fail me after a couple of days of playing resulting in the fatal error message “disc unreadable”. Naturally at first I blamed the 360 for the demise of the disc, who wouldn’t considering all the hardware horror stories, but it looks as if the disc itself is the culprit after I discovered a couple of hairline cracks radiating from the centre.

I don’t believe I’ve been treating the disc unreasonably, I’ve only been taking it out of the case and putting it back again, not throwing it around, leaving it in the freezer, or using it as a coaster. So I’m inclined to believe that the disc was faulty in the first place. The bad news is that I’m now going to have to fork out for another copy for my collection, I should however be able to pick up a cheap copy easily enough nowadays.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m afraid I just couldn’t resist pre-ordering the GTA IV: Special Edition. I’m a real sucker for special editions, limited editions, collectors editions, or whatever “extra” moniker they decide to slap onto the box.

I know that for a majority of the time the extras included in these so called “special editions” are superfluous, but I believe that after years of brain conditioning from marketing and advertising campaigns my frontal lobe is overridden by a base desire just to “have it”.

Anyway, I should hopefully find out how “special” these goodies are when the game is released later this month.

I’ve now returned from a fantastic snowboarding holiday in Winter Park and I can safely say it had some of the best snow and trails I’ve ever experienced. Ah, the memories… No bones were broken, just some minor sprains, and my body clock is now returning to normal after a few days of confusion from jet lag and a very long return journey when our flight was cancelled because of very high winds in London.

As you can probably imagine I was a bit too preoccupied to play any games on the DS while away as I’d hoped. I’m only just settling back into normality here in the UK and catching up with the latest goings on with our beloved hobby, but as soon as I’m back in the flow you can expect the usual run of impressions and reviews to continue.

Just a brief post to say that there won’t be any updates for a while as I’m embarking on another Snowboarding trip soon. This time I’m off to Winter Park, Colorado, USA and I can’t wait to hit the slopes!

Also, I found out yesterday from a colleague that the site hasn’t been displaying correctly on Internet Explorer since Wednesday. This has now been fixed and I’ll have to ensure I check the site with other browsers more often. Apologies!

I’ll be posting as usual upon my return and I’ve a few improvements planned for Consolation Prize which I didn’t want to implement before the trip. Until then, whatever game you’re playing, have fun!

Last Friday saw the release of Devil May Cry 4 for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in the UK. I was intending to treat my PS3 to a new game as I feared it had been neglected for far too long and DMC4 seemed the perfect choice. I’d tried out the demo on both formats and although the differences seemed hardly perceptible the controls on the PS3 version felt a bit more responsive.

Alas, the decision on which version to pick was already made for me as the price difference between the two versions was unacceptable, and I certainly wasn’t willing to pay 10 GBP more for the privilege of playing the game on the PS3.

The price of games between the two formats is usually very comparable, and I can’t remember seeing any significant difference before. Thankfully I have the luxury of being able to pick and choose as I see fit, but I can imagine there are a few PS3 owners out there that are feeling both frustrated and annoyed with the price inequality. I sincerely hope this is a one off occurrence and not a sign of things to come for the PS3 just because it’s doing well in Europe.

I’m only about three hours into Devil May Cry 4 so far and overall I’m enjoying the game. There are a few niggles here and there, mainly to do with the camera angle, but I was expecting as much from the demo. The gameplay is solid and the cut-scenes have been great, even if they’re completely over the top, but they’re worth viewing at least the once.

I was playing through a few games of
Catan on the 360 the other night, working towards the “Knight of Catan” achievement. It’s easy enough to get, you just have to finish the game ten times with the largest army card but I’ve never focused on the largest army before, preferring a road building and settlement strategy with a dose of knights for protection. As is usual with an Xbox Live Arcade game I always have a quick look at the leader boards to compare how badly I’m faring against the rest of the world.On the single player leader board I noticed that all the top players have easily logged over 2000 games and the leader of the pack is way out in front with over 5000 games played.

Now although that’s an impressive feat it raises the question of “how much time do you invest in a game?”. With Catan as an example even if you set it to the easiest AI, three players, and a capped victory point condition of seven instead of the usual ten then I would reckon a game would last between 10 and 15 minutes and therefore just to play 2000 games you’d need to invest somewhere between 300 to 500 hours. This is a serious amount of time dedicated to one game and although Catan is a good game I would find it extremely difficult to play the same game so often as to rack up this kind of tally in a year.

Of all the games I’ve played only one springs to mind that kept me entertained long enough to breach the 100 hours game-play mark, namely
Oblivion. A fantasy RPG game with a highly detailed world that captured my imagination and proved to be a very immersing experience. However, even with a game as good as Oblivion there came a point where I felt I’d had enough and it was time to move onto something new.

Oblivion is the exception not the rule in my case and I’d say 15-20 hours is the general amount of time spent per game. Of course when considering the number of games I’ve played over the last year I can easily imagine I’ve spent hundreds of hours in total playing games, thousands of hours when looking back historically over the years. For me the saying “variety is the spice of life” is certainly true. Although I always aim to complete a game I’m forever looking ahead to latest and greatest offerings on the horizon and I very rarely go back once I’ve moved on.

So dear reader, what game have you played the most and for how long?

Well it’s been quite a long time since the last post but fear not I’m hoping to start regular posts again starting this week.

Unfortunately I’ve not had a serious gaming session for a few weeks now. Even though there have been plenty of games to play, and a backlog of games to complete, I’ve been having a bit of “game burnout” recently and just couldn’t get enthused enough to play any of them. I tend to find it happens every now and again and the best thing to do is just to step back from the gaming scene for a few weeks (or even months) until you’re ready to play games for fun again.

After a week’s trip snowboarding in the French Alps and settling back into the daily grind I’m once again getting the gaming itch. The only deliberation is whether to finish the game of “Mass Effect” I started weeks ago (if I can remember what I was doing) or to start the year afresh with a completely new game. Suggestions are welcome!