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Gaming moments: B

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Bangai-O: Missile Fury (Xbox 360)

Having played both Bangai-O and Spirits, I was expecting many missiles.  The sheer size and number of projectiles when I first launched a MAX attack stays with me, as well as the slowdown, half of which I'm sure was fake.

Bayonetta (Xbox 360)

I am hopeless at the game itself - but I will never forget the car's radio playing Outrun music in the cutscene after the prologue.

Beyond Good & Evil (Xbox)

The final upgrade to your hovercraft ... and suddenly you have a spaceship.  Having become familiar with the world over a number of hours, being torn away to pursue the final fight was unsettling.

Bishi Bashi Special (PS)

ATTENTION!  Matt didn't read the instructions, and failed time and time again.

Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons (PS3)

Calling upon the bravery and spirit of the elder brother to cross the water. An astounding statement made with no words.

Broken Sword (PS)

Unbelievable slowdown when reaching the desert town. I gave up and played the PC verion a couple of years later.

Black (Xbox)

Having made it to the end of the game, the last corridor and boss were just too difficult.  I never completed it and resent the whole thing to this day. 

Gaming moments: A

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This isn't the same as gaming memories - this is about discrete moments in games.  Moments like these:

Aladdin (Mega Drive)

After playing through a number of platform levels, each of which accompanied by music from the film, you get placed on a flying carpet for a section entitled "rug ride".  It's an automatic scrolling level, which speeds up over time to the point where you are almost required to memorise the level - but not quite.  The music that plays is an original composition for the game, and fits perfectly with the acceleration. You get to the end, and realise that for the last ten seconds of the level you've been holding your breath ... but you survived, and you are five lives up.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike (DS)

Not the big oozium level, which is the part of the campaign I can remember, but Twin Isle, one of the war room maps.  Twin Isle was in Advance Wars 2, but it never seemed a stumbling block there.  In AWDS, however, something about the balance had changed and I played that one map for weeks just trying to get an A grade.  I managed it, after working out a wonderfully elegant solution, which this margin is too narrow to contain.

Assassin's Creed II (Xbox 360)

You get towards the end of the game and suddenly you're in Venice.  And it really is Venice - I've been a couple of times and I recognised it immediately.  There have been few occasions when I've felt such a sense of location. 

Titanfall: I killed one – no, two!

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Two titans, that is.  Big stumpy robots.  I was waiting for this to come down in price given its online-only and multiplayer nature, and I'm glad I did; the game feels a bit light on content from what I've played so far, with matches lasting a relatively short period of time, and everything being a little repetitive.


But it's repetitive fun, and that's the important bit - it takes a while to work out what's happening, but once you do the game's tense and exciting.  The feeling of reward you get for each kill is immense, particularly when the kill is a titan.

Games Evening 23.7

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A rarity, with Matt and Andrew visiting with no children in tow.  They did so in order that we could play some games, before Andrew moves 34,771 miles away.  The idea was to play like we used to, including finding games as close as we could to our old habits.  Unfortunately, a number of my games are still in the loft, so I was unable to get hold of PES4, Burnout 3, or Rockband.  We made do with what I had to hand.
  • Mario Kart 8 - still superb.  Andrew quite enjoyed it, although the use of items somewhat eluded him.
  • FIFA 13 - we were hopeless, until we turned the difficulty down from 3/5 to 1/5.  Playing as England against Accrington and some random Irish team, we managed to scrape a couple of wins.
  • Blur - the screens were too small, unfortunately.
  • Nintendo Land - the real star of the evening.  We were in fits of giggles as Andrew ran in the wrong direction, away from Matt, during Chase Mario.  We never got around to playing Ghost Mansion, which is probably for the best.

Project Gotham Racing 4: moving to the silvers

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Following an evening on Wednesday where John, Kieron and I met up online to kill each other in Halo 3, race around in PGR4, and find orbs with each other in Crackdown 2, I decided to see where I was in the various modes in PGR4.  A fair way in, it seems.

Back in 2008, I got frustrated that I had to play some levels with bikes.  I got past those at some point and when I started last night I was up to the eighth of ten sets of arcade challenges, with a variety of platinum, gold and silver medals.  I managed to complete each of the remaining challenges in set eight on my first go, so was feeling confident moving on to set nine.

Suddenly I couldn't use a nice controllable car - oh no.  Big powerful slippy monsters of cars that don't actually go where you want them to; coupled with elimination events where a single mistake can mean that you're never going to survive to the end.  It took many attempts, but I finally passed them ... to be confronted with a race around the Nürburgring.  Hmm.

Still, the game remains ace, and there's also the career mode to explore, which I have obviously played some of before.  It may stay in the Xbox 360 drive for a while.