Another game finished on the Playstation 3. Honestly, I liked this game, but for some reason I found it a bit frustrating; It’s a bit all over, like some confused drunk at a party, and that seems to be how your Sackboy seems to respond at times.

On one hand it wants to be an ingenious, cartoon like platformer – something which blows Mario out of the water, but it wants physics too because fizziks are like, cool and stuff these days. What you get then is a rather odd combination of things where controls are a bit fuzzy, events a little random, but the graphics and sound which ae very, very impressive.

The stages themselves are well constructed, but there’s no sense of overall storyline, just that selection of stages. Given the focus on ‘community generated’ content, it’s easy to see where that came from.

Towards the end of the single player game the levels get a bit harder, but the final boss is disappointingly easy.

If like me, you’re not someone who mush absolutely collect 100% of anything on any level in any game, crave community content, and intend to spend hours crafting your own levels, then you’ll likely feel a bit underwhelmed by Little Big Planet, and wonder at some of it’s amazing scores. It’s good, but not that good as a single player game, just a decent platformer on a console lacking in decent platformers.

Just a short post on this – after three and a half years, I’ve finally unsubscribed to the MMORPG City of Heroes. I used to really enjoy it, but alas, in the last year or two I just don’t have the time and inclination to ‘play’ a grinding level game. I only made it to level 32 with my top character.

Don’t misunderstand; I think it’s a great game, and would encourage people to go and try it out, whether or not you’re of the super hero inclination. It looks nice, plays well, and most of the other people online are fairly civil and accommodating, which is an absolute revelation after years of playing Counter Strike. Part of my problem has always been that being here in Japan, the population density in my evening was low, as the roaring lion’s share of players are in North America and to a lesser extent, Europe. That means that picking up teams or even partners for missions wasn’t easy when I was on, except at the weekend, which has increasingly become family time.

I would say I really enjoyed it for the first two and a bit years, then I would only play a bit now and again, and last month I just decided to cut my losses, or at least my subscription fee, and cancel it. I had about six characters I would play with because I was more into trying out all the different powers than advancing much higher. Ultimately, in 42 months, I burned 544 hours on it. for stats freaks, and as an example, I clocked up only 18 hours in the last year. Still, that’s an absurd amount of time when I think about it.

So that’s where I am. I won’t be going to WoW, or EVE or any other pay as you go game per se, I’ll be spending what little gaming time I have on shorter term completion projects like console games, solo or co-op, and the odd DS game.

Yes, I know that’s a post title which will earn me some odd, and possibly unwanted Google hits. Just a nod that Zero Punctuation’s Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw did a great job on the game I’m currently playing, Assassin’s Creed on the 360. And yes, I do all the foul things he did too.

Zero Punctuation is really one of three gameStrategia giochi di casino – MANI MOLLI – Se avete da 13 a 18, doppio giu’ quando il upcard del commerciante e’ 5 o 6. related humour sites I check regularly, the other two being the almost stalwart Penny-Arcade, where I almost always find the prose wittier than the strip, and the less frequent but randomly excellent Angry Video Game Nerd.

Despite only fair reviews, the only thing that you need to ask before buying/renting this is; do I like classic [Hong Kong, pre-1993] John Woo films? If you do, then check this game out. If you don’t, then stop watching Tom Cruise’s hair in Impossible to Watch Mission 2, and check out anything before 1993 from the Woo catalogue.

Personally, I loved the old Woo films, of which Stranglehold is an imaginary sequel, to 1992′s Hard Boiled. Fantastic. Awesome. (Whenever I went into the baby room after our daughter was born would I think about the ending of at film).

Moving quickly on.

This then, is what this game does – sweeping gun moves, diving onto a trolleys, a pistol in each hand, wasting a thug as doves flutter off into the distance. It’s all that. Huge destructible environments.

Try out the demo on XBox live, and expect more of the same. I really enjoyed it; there’s no complex cover scheme, or anything, just Tequila, a few different weapons and all out gun battles. The closest thing to strategy were the ‘Tequila Bombs’, four special moves you need to power up through stylish gun play, which either give you health, perform accurate nad head shots, allow you to be invulnerable for a few seconds, or do a spinning smart-bomb like gun routine. Very Woo.

So in summary: straight shooting, minimal plot about kidnapping, a very Chow Yun Fat Tequila, and everything getting blow up. Any questions?

Well, I finally finished Bioshock; well one of the endings. It was fantastic – well worth the time and effort. I played the nice guy and rescued all the Little Sisters. See? I’m not as bad as people would have you believe.

Despite a small amount of grind, this really is a magnificently designed game, where the story keeps you going as much as the action, and there’s just enough twists to keep each level interesting.

I think this is more of a shooter than the strategy 2K were pushing, but that doesn’t detract from the game itself, which looks beautiful, sounds really quite disturbing, and reminds you that not all first person shooters these days are generic. Each level has a slightly different feel to it, with only one of them – Proving Grounds – to be on rails. The rest you’re pretty free to wander, and splicer spawn points dont feel too orchestrated. The voice acting is excellent too, and there’s some very nice set pieces, and some nice voice diaries next to set up rooms. The water effects truly were excellent all the way through, but so was the fire, and even the electrical bolts didn’t look too cheesy. This has definitely been the best looking game on the 360 for me so far. Even better than Gears of War.

It’s a shame there wasn’t any multi-player, as the level design is very tight, but since the single player goes on for about twenty hours, you wont regret the outlay in time or money. Maybe the designers felt that multi-player would’ve diluted the mythology of the game itself.

Bye Bye Mr. Bubbles.

I used to note here on the blog when I finished games, but I see, with a certain amount of disdain, that the last one I mentioned was FEAR, over a year ago. Fear not though [excuse the pun], I haven’t been asleep at the joypad so to speak. Though the arrival of our little addition last year greatly reduced the family gaming time, I still managed to get a few titles polished off:

Double Dragon
(Sept. 11th 2007 / X360) OK, so this one on Xbox Live Arcade maybe doesn’t really qualify – I think it took me just over half an hour to finish – but hey, given the collision detection and repetitive gameplay and sound effects, I feel I earned it. I’m sure it was better when I was growing up, or maybe that’s just because I was throwing a few 10p coins into it. Points to the port team for putting an achievement for jumping the notoriously difficult (due to the controls and collision) ‘jump over the broken bridge’ on your first attempt.

Elebits
(Sept. 5th 2007 / Wii) This is one of those games where it just needs the Wiimote as you chuck stuff around a domestic environment chasing these elebits, which apparently power everything in the world. Though a really good game, and obviously well suited to the Wii, there are some issues. Some of the levels do suffer from slow-down as huge numbers of objects and a physics engine are obviously not the Wii’s forte, but overall, it was a lot of fun. It’s also a shame the games beautiful pain artwork on the manual and between levels isn’t carried into the game itself. Also note that the last Boss really is far too easy given the difficulty of some of the later levels.

Tomb Raider : Legend
(Aug. 5th 2007 / X360) This was my first Lara Croft game, and I have to say that it was a lot better than I expected. Actually, I don’t know what I expected, but maybe due to the movies and the media I expected something a bit dumb and flashy, but lacking and real gameplay, but honestly I thought the game was actually well designed. Although an early 360 game, the graphics do looks very nice in some of the levels, and the puzzles are quite clever. Well done for giving the option to skip cinematics too. Weird point: the various animals in some of the stages are the hardest things in the game to kill – often taking over a clip from an M-16. This could be a nod to environmentalism, but hey, the game’s called ‘Tomb Raider’, so the karma is already pretty low.

Prey
(July 9th 2007 / X360) Long awaited and oft discussed, this is a Native American inspired FPS, with a helpful eagle, spirit worlds, churning gravity puzzles, and oddly, not as much shooting as you’d think. Even though I’m not a FPS expert, I quite liked this game, though it is a bit slow to start with, and the weapons never feel quite as powerful as they should be. Again, the puzzles are good, and the voice acting is quite decent given the genre, and the the subject matter. Worth a rent.

Gears of War
(March 16th 2007 / X360) The game which sold a million 360′s. Probably. Also probable it was the game which tipped me onto the 360 side. A very well designed third person shooter, great voice acting, and a solid back story and level design. The only down side is that half of one of the later levels is obviously missing (presented this year in the PC version). The co-op play is excellent with the headset though. Great fun, and worth a buy.