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Gaming moments: E

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Essential Sudoku DS (DS)

After competing 999 picross puzzles, there was one left.  Surely the pinnacle of difficulty, it's surely going to be a trophy or medal or something special.  Oh no, it's really easy and it's a pie chart.  A bloody pie chart.

Earth Defense Force 2017 (Xbox 360)
Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable (PS Vita)

Both games have many highlights, but the thing I will remember most is the mission in which you are sent into battle against the massive walking fortress.  I destroyed more of the city than the fortress did while trying to attack it, and finally the mission ends with you withdrawing because your weapons aren't powerful enough.  Sorry I broke the Space Needle for nothing, guys.

Exit (PSP)

One of the characters you have to rescue is very fat. I called him Fatty.  I pushed boxes onto him.  He died.

Ecolibrium (PS Vita)

Playing on the train, on the tutorial.  And then the game requires me to look around 180 degrees with my Vita to see the animals behind me.  Not going to happen; never loaded up again.

Endless Ocean (Wii)

I recently went back to this as part of the "Au Revoir Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection" drive, which was pointless as the only online mode it has is to connect to a friend who is simultaneously playing the game; that will never have happened.  Anyway, during my brief play I watched the most stilted and awkward cutscene ever made.

EyeToy: Play (PS2)

Accompanying the cleaning suds game with "When I'm Cleaning Windows" was a work of genius. 

Endless Ocean: tickling fish

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As part of my Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection goodbye tour, I went back to the seas in the Endless Ocean.  I couldn't work out what was going on at all; I wandered the boat looking for how I could play multiplayer, found that I had a dolphin companion, and went diving.

My dolphin seems to be able to bury his tail in the sand.


I swam around for ages, looking at random fish and managing to uncover their names by touching them.  Except sometimes that didn't reveal their names, and some fish I had already seen.




The area I could swim in was pretty limited, and I kept finding caves that I wanted to explore but they were too far outside the "target area".  Pretty fish kept swimming away.


Eventually I decided to try to find the multiplayer again, so returned to the boat. I have no idea why my character has a ponytail.  I eventually found the ladder leading to the Wi-Fi enabled sea, only to find that it would only let me join an existing friend who was online at the same time.  I don't know anyone else with the game.

I wandered back to the back of the ship, only to find the most stilted conversation ever.  No idea who she's talking about here.






The Conduit: one-hit killed

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I have still played relatively few first person shooters using the Wii remote, which is surprising when you consider how well it works. It's easy to aim at an enemy quickly, and as long as you fiddle with the sensitivity settings it can be much quicker to turn than a pad.

I enjoyed my time playing The Conduit's multiplayer, although I was hopeless. I'm pretty sure that a couple of the games I played were ruined by hackers - people who came into a room, survived a few headshots, and killed me with one shot. If they're not good enough to play properly, so be it.


I may well try the single-player game at some point.  It was great to see a vibrant community playing the game, and I hope that they can find another similar game to play going forwards. Maybe The Conduit 3 on Wii U …

Battalion Wars 2: you sank my battleship

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I had never played this.  I've played the first game on the Gamecube a bit, but not huge amounts.  I remembered it's a real-time strategy game where you control units directly.  What more did I need before launching myself online?


I decided to see if anyone was playing a cooperative game first, because that way I could try to ride on someone's coat tails while I learnt the controls.  This was a good idea; I didn't even understand the objectives to start with.


I took immediate control of a battleship, and started shelling the enemy ships.  This seemed to go well until my other units and my colleague's units started to get a bit too close to the enemy.  I think I sank one of my own ships before I worked out how to change which unit I was controlling.


Having been left with a solitary infantry unit, I was glad to be given reinforcements when I landed on the beach.



Many of them didn't last long either.  I was instead left to blunder through the level following my colleague in arms, and even that didn't go to plan.  I tried to help a little too much, and got all my units killed.  Luckily there were some prisoner of war camps nearby that my men were rescued from.


A final push up the hill, and I completed the mission.  Easy!



It's a really good game, actually - I just need to find some time to work my way through the single player modes of the first one before I tackle this.  Maybe some time in 2037.

Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection: a last hoorah

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Pikmin 2 has taken a bit of a back seat for a while, as I was finally able to get hold of my Wii games from the loft and play through those that use NWC for an online connection.  Today, you see, is the last day of full service, with the closure of GameSpy taking NWC down with it.  Before it disappeared, I wanted to see what I would otherwise miss.

I'll write up some games in more detail over the next few weeks, but in general I was surprised to find that in all but one case I was able to find people to play against or with.  This, on a console thought to have the least active online community, in some cases on games that are seven or eight years old.  It has been quite a contrast to Xbox Live, say, where if you're playing a game older then a few months it's rare to see anyone else in the world.  This may well, of course, be due to people logging back in to play the games one last time before the server shutdowns, but still …

For some of these games it meant taking the wrapping off - they've been sat on the "to play" pile for years.  Battalion Wars 2 was really fun, and I suspect I'll go back to that (though I never completed the first game).  I was hopeless at The Conduit, though I did manage at least one kill.  Mario Strikers Charged Football is a great game, even though I did lose the first game 28-1 because I couldn't find the tackle button (and there was a fair amount of lag) - the second game was a loss too, but at 3-2 it's a bit more respectable.

A lot of my time has been playing Mario Kart Wii's time trial ghost challenge mode, where you get one attempt at beating a ghost that's downloaded (which has a time just ahead of your best time, I think).  It's incredibly addictive.