Equally Cursed And Blessed

Posted by oddbob on August 26, 2008 · Lovingly Filed Under Things I Enjoyed 
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Hello readers of mainstream magazinedom! I’m afraid I don’t have any big words for you except ones I’ve made up (like cuntabulous) but please, feel free to stick around. It’s great to have you here. Massive apologies for the minimalist look at the moment, I promise I’ll do something with it soon*

I realise that with being so absolutely snowed under recently organising the RR competiton, I’ve not really spent the time I should on this blog except to do the odd big post complaining about something, muttering something about War Twat or to complain that I’m really, really busy. Man, it’s only sitting there looking back that you realise just how unexciting all this really is isn’t it?

To all of you bored off your tits, I’m incredibly sorry I’ll try to remedy this now that the organisation of said competition is pretty much a done deal. In the meantime, there is actually something I wanted to post and dammit, there isn’t anything you can do to stop me. Well, there is, but chewing my hands off isn’t a very nice thing to do.

There was a comment on ever excellent read Way Of The Rodent from a rather drunk Mr Moobaa that held within it a million (well, one, but that doesn’t sound quite so epic a start for a post) truthes.  I quote, “Fuck me, we are really blessed. REALLY. BLESSED.”. And you know what? For all my pissing, whinging and niggling, we fucking are.

I’ve spent the majority of what little free time I’ve had this month gaming, and not just doing my usual run of downloading everything in sight and seeing if anything takes my fancy. Actual, proper, gaming. As in sitting on the couch (havat ye PC nerds), controller in hand and playing games. The last time I spent any serious length of time with a gaming addiction was, oooh, around 12 months ago when Space Giraffe dropped into our lucky laps and the shiny freshness of having a new 360 hadn’t quite worn off yet. I have, obviously, played games since then because that’d be silly otherwise, but not had that urge to push myself further and further on a game till I was either forced to admit I was shit at it or to trump some high scores because I can. 

As you’d expect from me, dear readers, it’s not been on megabudget huge massive four hundred and ninety six hour epics, it’s been with my much beloved arcade shits and giggles games. And Braid. But I don’t want to talk about Braid because the rest of the internet has covered it in more praise than a Sunday Sermon and if you don’t already know that it’s one of the most beautiful games you’ll play by now, it’s likely you’ll never find out. Primarily, it’s been on both Geometry Wars RE 2 and Galaga Legions, both of which are awesome in their own seperate ways. Unfortunately, as happened with the original GW RE, I hit a brick wall and it’s random nature began to frustrate me more and more as I never felt like I was actually improving my game just flooking it every one game in ten. Yet, I still find myself going back for more. Why is that?

It’s the fucking scoreboard, that’s what it is. Goddamnit if Bizarre Creations haven’t only gone and implemented one of the best scoreboard features in a game since Jeff unleashed the awesome Start Bonus on the world a little over 12 months ago (which trumped the also superb Resume Best option from Gridrunner++ by a country mile) and it’s an insanely simple but utterly brilliant thing. Sitting in the top of the game screen opposite your own score lies the high score. Not your high score by default though, oh no, it’s the score of the person above you on your friends list. Beat that, and it displays the next person above you and so on.

It was one thing being a kid and grabbing a high score on an arcade machine and coming back to find GIT had beaten your score in the intervening 24 hours before your return but to have this displayed in realtime? Such a simple thing but for a high score chaser (and as you can see by my GWRE2 gamertag below, a rather shit one in this case) like myself it’s like digital crack. And that’s the one and only time I’ll use that euphamism.

After playing GWRE2 with this feature (and an honourable mention must go to Braid for it’s near interfaceless game experience), as wonderful as Galaga Legions is, its interface is like being thrown back into the dark ages.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I fucking love it when something so glorious crops up in a game that it changes the way you consider the game experience. The Geometry Wars RE2 constant updating of your next opponents score is one of those features that deserves to become standard but also makes you wonder why no-one has considered implementing it before. It really is a genius addition and if only enemies didn’t spawn too fucking close to you all the time, GWRE2 would likely be clambering its way up to my top ten of games with ease. But you can’t have everything, right?

Talking of not being able to have everything, I’ve just got my UPS label and my beloved Xbox will soon be on its way to Germany and put an end to this reinvigorated gaming session for a few weeks. Which is cunt. It lasted a little over 12 months all told and I don’t think I’ve had so much fun with a console since the PS1 held me in its thrall. I’ll miss it, but maybe it’ll give me chance to put some proper time into some of those indie titles I’ve been promising myself I’ll devote more of a chance to. Except Trials 2 because that kicks my arse too hard.

 

*did that sound sincere? It’s the best I can do, sorry.

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Speak your brains

3 Responses to “Equally Cursed And Blessed”

  1. oddbob on August 26th, 2008 9:46 pm

    Actually, thinking about it, I’m a cunt.

    I’d forgotten about the Dreamcast.

    Death by UK Resistance surely follows, I’m sorry.

  2. Richard Phipps on August 27th, 2008 7:31 pm

    You’ll lose the xbox just in time for the compo then.. doing an entry?

  3. oddbob on August 27th, 2008 9:07 pm

    No chance :-D

    Hoping to find the time to clean up some unfinished stuff, I’ve got Aztec Tomb and G-Force which are both a hairs breath away from finished, George still with my part left to do and half a shooter dangling over me.

    Compo organisation and school hols have put paid to most of that getting done before now, well, combined with my own “can’t be arsed”.

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