KitGonzo

Beat Spelnky the easy way. 456 attempts to get there. I suck but I'm still proud.

Well, after 456 attempts, I finally beat Spelunky the easy way. And I did it on a daily. Took me a level 2 Jetpack, climbing gloves, a Mattok on Level 3 thanks to the snake pit, which gave me enough cash to buy the Ankh (no pissing off shopkeepers for me). There was a very generous amount of bombs in Olmec's Lair, which helped though I would have gotten it done without them, I think. Needed the Ankh though - in the ice caves, a mammoth froze a flying saucer which fell on my head. Would have been superpissed if that had ended the game. Words cannot express how proud I feel. So, so happy.

Yeah, I was pretty amazed. I mean, she got a pretty good 'roll' in that it was a fairly straightforward level (by which I mean fairly 'quick-dex' light, with traversal requiring more pathfinding than split second timing, for the most part), but I was still impressed at watching her navigate it, and realising when she hit the exit that I hadn't helped her out at all. Mainly though the whole experience is just so gooey for me because she’s four. How much gaming goodness awaits us both?

I've been playing a fair bit of co-op with my 4 year old daughter. She's got some game. We've made it to the ice caves a couple of times. The only problem is she's scared of the wildlife and spikes/tiki traps, at which point she will just launch her controller at me for me to take over. With spikes etc it's not so bad, because i can jsut carry her past the obsticle, but with bats or spiders, it can get tricky. She also insists on always rescuing the dog, so I'm rarely above 4 health. It's such a joy though, she's just so into it. Oh, over the weekend, she also completed a jungle level solo. I can't tell you how proud that made me.

Mirror's Edge. I hit a bug at the 50% marker of GTA V (I've since found a fix, so I'll be back on the story mode of that soon) ands couldn't face a restart, so I went over to Mirror's Edge which reached the top of my catch-up pile (fun fact: next up is Turok). I really enjoyed it, a lot. I found there was an initial difficulty spike, but loved how, on a good day, the timing of movement reminded me of the combat in Arkham - it just flowed. The shooter parts were the least satisfying to me - not because they played badly, I think they did a good job of making it feel like shooting just wasn't the protagonist's 'thing', and thus a little unwieldy - but because I found it too hard to not shoot people in the later levels, even though my preference would have been a 'no kills' play through. That's probably me just being a baby gamer and not really learning to do the unarmed combat well. If I had more time, I can well imagine getting into the speed runs and so forth, there's something very satisfying about the zen-like state you hit when your mind and controls are working as one. LOVED the art direction and level design, for the most part - the way the level tells you where to go without telling you where to go, so well done. TL:DR - Liked it a lot.

Wow, Tundra, thanks for the two-fer spoiler there. Good work if you can get it...

Completing the third triathalon took me over half an hour. After I got to the finish line, I found out my bike had been impounded, so I hired a cab to take me to the car impound. It was a 15 minute cab ride, and I alternated between checking out the city as twighlight turned to evening and dicking about on my smartphone. It felt very meta.

I finally started playing GTA IV, thinking I should get it played before picking up V (much, much later). Then my amazing wife came home from the weekly trip to the supermarket with GTA V in her hand. I've only played the first two or three missions, but I almost can’t deal with how amazing the game looks. It's hard to believe it's the same hardware as IV. I guess this really is the year of the PS3. I’m kind of sad that I won’t ever get to experience IV now the way people did at the time (in truth, having played Red Dead, IV already felt a bit creaky by comparison). But for one of the few times in my life I’m experiencing a AAA release as it happens, and I am floored by what I’m seeing.

So I've been trying to catch up with 'classic' PS3 titles before a PS4 arrives in my life and takes over (probably not for another 12 - 18 months, but still). I only got my PS3 in 2011, so I've almost never paid full price for a game, because I've always been far enough behind that there's tons of good cheap games to buy. I've also always thought of myself as someone that is more wowed by good game play than outstanding graphics. I still replay the original XCOM on steam, for example, and if you put me down in front of Civ 2 tonight, I'd probably play until Sunday quite happily. All of which is why I'm kind of bummed out that I've bailed on Yakuza 3. Bailed as in 'stuck it on eBay'. In the spirit of the thread, I guess I need to figure out why. First up, the game was old when it came out, if you see what I mean. Example: There's fully voiced dialogue in cut scenes, but then also long periods of text dialogue that you cycle through pressing x. The graphics look like high end PS2 to me, and certainly don't come close to GTA IV, let alone anything that came since. So it doesn't look great. Also, the pace is glacial. It feels like the game wants to give you a tutorial on everything. When I got to hour 6 or 7 and I was learning how to play golf? Alarm bells were ringing. I'd been promised a great GTA style open world type deal - where the hell was that? A more serious problem was that I just couldn't play the game. I beat the first boss on the second or third attempt, the second boss after 10 - 15 minutes, but boss 3? Not only could I not beat him, I couldn't even figure out how I was supposed to beat him. My reactions are not terrible, but I do seem to struggle a bit with 'twitch' beat em up fighters (though I have mad love for the Arkham Asylum combat system). After a good 45 minutes, and ignoring repeated messages to drop the difficulty to Easy, I realised this one was going to have to pass me by, and I quit. I think what's bugging me about this is that a lot of why I quit basically comes down to the age of the game. I'm sure if I'd played it when it came out, I'd have stuck with it. This does not bode well for the Tomb Raider and Hitman HD collections currently sitting on my shelf, and it kind of bums me out because I'm not quite the gamer I thought I was. Ah well, on to GTA IV.

You guys, I fell like someone should actually tell them at this point, you know? http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/09/06/hunting-down-famous-developers-lost-games Is this article the Citizen Kane of Too Much Johnson references?

Yeah, that's totally fair enough. I didn't really feel like Dead Space was trying for psychological horror particularly, it was more monster scares/jumps haunted house stuff for me. The story was fine, but not the point of the experience for me - for me, the point was being in a zombie movie in space with added Clive Barker-esque gross creatures. In that capacity, it freaked me the hell out, in a great way. . But the story is definitely weaker than the atmosphere of the moment-to-moment play. That said, for me it all hung together pretty well.

Yeah, I think that's right. The sense of anticipation was really high. It also got to the point where even the act of acquiring ammo and items was stressful, because if the game is giving me all this stuff, some MAJOR shit is about to go down... Also the way the environment would often change during/just before combat (lights going out, vents exploding etc.) would get the heart rate up. The goddamn sound design though… so so good.

I loved the stomping - felt so 'grindhouse horrror'.

You misquoted them - they said they were 'blown away'.com.

Dead Space - Is this the best realised survival horror game ever? So much to love. The zero gravity srctions, the terrifying critters, sound design, lighting... Constant peril. Constant 'oh shit, what next?' Really feels like a journey. Even the boss fights didn't suck. One of the highlights of my 'PS3 catch-up' journey so far. Hotline Miami - Just beat the epilogue last night. Apparently there’s puzzles. Will probably look them up on the internet, because, yeah. This one got under my skin, in a different way. Such addictive gameplay. Incredible aesthetic. Aaaaaaaand (drum roll please) Far Cry motherfuckin' 2 - Have kept coming back to this in-between other games. Finally went on a jag and finished the main story a week or so ago. Played both endings, just to see it out. It's Far Cry 2. I had to be in the mood, sometimes it felt like a grind, other times an exceptional open world experience. That depended entirely on my frame of mind. The game is the game. It doesn't appear to care what you think of it. I loved it for that. So, now on Dishonoured for 1st person, with GTA IV for 3rd person. This should take a while...