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Wii Sports Club: 2006 as it should have been

Posted on 12/11/2013 Written by Xexyz

Wii Sports was a fantastic game - back at the launch of the Wii, we played it more than anything else, and it continued to occupy me for some time afterwards.  Its inclusive nature means that it still gets brought out very often for social occasions (but less often since Nintendo Land came onto the scene), the most memorable time being when I beat Ken.

It's now been updated - or at least part of it has - with better visuals, online modes, and an extortionate price tag.  Luckily, of the five games included in the original Wii Sports, the two best are out already and there's no need to buy the other three.

I've spent a bit of time on both Tennis and Bowling - to the extent that my shoulders are aching.  Tennis sees the most obvious improvements, with motionplus giving much better control over the player, and online meaning that you can find a decent set of opponents to play against.


I've been starting with the offline mode to get into the swing of things, and amusingly the third game had me paired up against a couple of OAPs.  I beat them, just.

I've spent more time bowling, where the online leaderboards add a lot to the game.  Oddly, deKay posted a score of 214 to Miiverse, but the leaderboard showed him with a lower score.  I was incredibly annoyed when I scored three points less than his claimed score.


A couple of games later, though, I got the hang of the controls, and managed to get five strikes in a row, at the end of the game.


This meant that I ended up with a pretty good score.


The online modes for bowling are a little odd; you watch everyone else taking their turn and can send pre-programmed phrases offering encouragement, congratulations or commiserations.  As with tennis, any games you play are racked up in your 'club' score, and you define which club you wish to be a member of, theoretically by stating where you live.


I'm helping England South East here.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: wii u

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies: non-existent monsters

Posted on 08/11/2013 Written by Xexyz

Just reaching the end of episode two; this is so far a great game with little emphasis on special powers, which spoilt the Apollo Justice game somewhat and were a bit tenuous in Justice For All and Trials & Tribulations. Athena's power is used very sparingly, just enough to break up the trial process, but it's not been used as yet as a way out of a dead end - at all times I've been able to see where the evidence would eventually point.

I wasn't a huge fan of the setting for the second episode, though.  It suffered from the fact that the game has been transferred from Japan to the US, but all the settings were unmistakeably Japanese and so the story had to crowbar in references to how the villages were modelled on Japanese styles, superstitions were Japanese, festivals were to celebrate Japan ... the overt use of superstitions and monsters also seemed pretty ludicrous at first, though of course that just meant that part of the game was spent with me trying to work out a way to show that there was no such thing as a monster called Tenma Taro.

Case three now, and I'm off to university as an eighteen-year-old girl.  I'm sure it's not possible to be a lawyer at that age ...

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: 3ds

Blur: being hopeless

Posted on 07/11/2013 Written by Xexyz

I still haven't worked out what an X5 multiplier is, so I skipped onto the next set of challenges and got bronzes and silvers on them all, but still didn't unlock the one-on-one challenge.  I have a feeling that the career of this game is going to be easier to complete by unlocking as much as possible, replaying events to gain more fans, unlocking faster and better cars, and going back to previous events to unlock the bosses.  That's fine other than the fact that some of the events are pretty difficult in themselves.

I'm seriously thinking about knocking the difficulty down to 'easy'.


The main reason I was playing this tonight was for multiplayer, though.  RLLMUK was organising a Blur revival night, but it never happened.  Instead I played a few races against randoms, which I comprehensively lost.  It wasn't until later on in the evening that I worked out how to use the handbrake to stop myself piling straight into barriers.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: Xbox 360

Red Dead Redemption: to Mexico!

Posted on 04/11/2013 Written by Xexyz

Use of the in-game satnav has helped with the cliff issue, but I've now reached a point in the story where this is no longer an issue.  After a fraught crossing of the river by raft (during which I probably shot half the population of Mexico, I'm now running around areas of Spanish speakers and being attacked by bobcats.  I don't think there's a way at the moment for me to get back to the US side of the river, so I hope there's noting that I've missed out on over there.

The game is just a bit too expansive, really, and I'm slightly put off by the amount of side missions and other bits and pieces that I know I'm not going to find and complete. I've decided to not worry about this, though, and my primary aim is to complete the story, ignoring the trophy list and multitudes of icons on the map.  I do keep getting distracted by the strangers and herbs, though.

According to the Rockstar Social Club, I've now completed 36.8% of the game.  I'm not sure if that's just the main missions or everything.  Still some way to go, whatever.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: Playstation 3

Tomb Raider 3: awkward

Posted on 01/11/2013 Written by Xexyz

I bought the entire Tomb Raider series on Steam a while ago, and I was inspired to play something after a short conversation with Sue on Twitter.
@suekitchen But which game? Looks like TR2 or TR3. Not angular enough though!
— Tim Miller (@Xexyzx) October 31, 2013
I never completed Tomb Raider 3, despite loving the first two, so this was an obvious thing to try. It took quite a while to get it working on my work laptop, and then configuring it to use the Xbox 360 pad took even longer.  I eventually settled an a scheme which meant I only needed to use the keyboard for crouching and walking slowly, and set off the the jungle.


The game looks a little rough nowadays, but that's not necessarily a bad thing given the paltry processing power of my laptop.  Rendering at 1280 x 800 meant that the game ran really smoothly; the cumbersome controls were a much bigger hindrance.  This was only part due to my inability to configure the 360 pad properly; the absence of a second stick to look around really hurts a game based around exploration.


It took a while to come across the first enemies.  I shot a monkey because I was convinced that he was looking at me funny; later on i realised that the monkeys only attack if attacked first.


That's not true of the tigers.  These took quite a few bullets to finish off, and bounded towards me very quickly.  Lara's not really a conservationist.


I got stuck on this bit for ages, mainly because the controls just weren't responsive enough for me to be able to pull the switch, turn around, and jump into the wall cavity before the big spiky wall killed me.

Despite the issues, it was fun to revisit the game.  As there doesn't seem to be a plan to remake TR2 and TR3 in the same way as Tomb Raider Anniversary, I may need to dig out my original PlayStation TR3 disc and play it on the PS3, which will overcome at least some of the control issues - plus, of course, in a month's time I'll be handing back this work laptop and have no idea if Steam will run on the next one.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: PC

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98: There Were No Ramekins
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Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? Of course not. You don’t listen to the podcast so why would some random jangling entertain you, eh? But do listen, because it’s only bloody Christmas again!

In Episode 98, deKay and Kendrick chat about some The Game Awards stuff, Half Life 3 (or not), and games!

98: There Were No Ramekins
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97: I’m Feeling A Bit Squiffy
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96: Magic Beans
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