Just Cause: just about playable

I have had Just Cause sitting in a variety of places for a while – in
the PS2 games box in the loft, in my Steam library on my PC, and on my
Xbox 360 shelves – but despite the fact that I’ve heard it to be great
fun and the sequel is an amazing sandbox experience, I’ve never played
it.  Until now.

I decided to play the PS2 version, since
my PS3 (which is backwards-compatible) was set up and my 360 wasn’t (due
to the Wii being plugged in to the component inputs for Luigi’s
Mansion; yes, it’s complicated).  The opening cinematics looked pretty
awful, but once I got control of my character I was quite impressed by
the scale of the game and its vision.  Parachuting down to the island
was a pretty spectacular start, and once I transitioned into running
along the beach and stealing a car, I could see that there were clear
open-world GTA influences at play.

Unfortunately, the PS2
was a bit underpowered for such a grand vision.  The framerate was, at
times, awful – to the extent that I actually had to run away and stand
still for the console to catch up.  This was not helped by the controls
which were not nearly customisable enough, and felt very imprecise.

That’s
not to say I didn’t have fun.  After a while I was given a grappling
hook, with which I could grab onto cars and paraglide behind them.  That
was good fun for a while, and useful on a mission where I had to
destroy a car and take the place of the now-dead dignitary.  The main
issue with the game was a lack of a sense of urgency; you are going to
kill a dictator and free the island, sure, but there was little spurring
you on to do this, and the game was almost too non-linear with no clear
sense of direction.

If I go back to it it would be on the 360, but I may skip to the sequel.

Gaming moments: I

Ico (PS2, PS3)

I even remember writing about this on my blog.  I’ll paste some text
from the previous post:

Ico starts off slowly, with a long cutscene. You get thrown into a murky
world and have to work out the controls. The world’s not actually murky,
but playing it on my HD TV certainly made it look so. I worked my way
through the castle, until I found the girl in white. I knocked the cage
down the tower, and rescued her from the shadow monsters. I then
couldn’t find a way out of the room. Huh.

Never mind, I thought, I’ll come back to that later. I’d been playing
for 40 minutes or so. I turned the console off, and then thought …
hmm, I wonder if the game does save at checkpoints?

Evidently not.

Ikaruga (GameCube)


I have only ever played this for five minutes, and it made my head hurt. 

Gaming moments: E

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. 

Sega Ages Outrun: absurdly difficult

With the news that a 3D version of Outrun is on the way to the 3DS, I remembered that I bought a PS2 disc a while ago which has the Sega Ages versions of a few games, including Outrun, on it.  I decided to give it a go on the PS3.

It’s still great fun, but it seems really hard compared to any version of Outrun I’ve played before.  I only managed to get to the end of the third stage, even after increasing the time limits available.  I wasn’t even crashing or spinning out more than once before running out of time.

I can’t think which other versions of Outrun I have. maybe I’ll have to find an arcade in Shenmue II.

Ico: take my hand

After the Singstar party, my PS2 was all set up and ready to go. My PS2 game collection is rather poor though, and nothing appealed – until I noticed the special editions of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus sitting on the shelf above. I’ve played Ico very little, and Shadow not at all. I decided that today should be the day.

Ico starts off slowly, with a long cutscene. You get thrown into a murky world and have to work out the controls. The world’s not actually murky, but playing it on my HD TV certainly made it look so. I worked my way through the castle, until I found the girl in white. I knocked the cage down the tower, and rescued her from the shadow monsters. I then couldn’t find a way out of the room. Huh.

Never mind, I thought, I’ll come back to that later. I’d been playing for 40 minutes or so. I turned the console off, and then thought … hmm, I wonder if the game does save at checkpoints?

Evidently not.

We’re spoilt now, with autosaves and save-anywhere mechanics. The reason it didn’t occur to me that the game might not have saved is that when I paused it, there was no way of manually saving. Oh no, it appears that to manually save you’ve got to sit down on a bench, which at that point I hadn’t found. It forces you to play a certain amount at a time. This is a problem for me – gaming tends to be half an hour here and there, and I can’t leave the PS2 on all night to pick it up again in the morning, like I used to do with games on the Mega Drive.

After all, I’m paying for the electricity now.

So, at some point I’ve got to play the entirety of the start of the game again. I hope it’s worth it.

Singstar: under the sea

As in, that is where I wish my head could be this morning. Why does Singstar necessitate a vast quantity of alcohol? Why do I wake up the next morning able to talk in a mere whisper, having flashbacks of genius, repulsion and amusement?

Sharon’s rendition of Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid will be remembered forever. Partially because I filmed it. Ken and I sang A Little Time by The Beautiful South. Justine videoed that, which is good in a way since I never would have believed just what I did.

The evening brought forwards talents unknown. Justine tied with Helen; the latter part of a choir. Sharon can’t rap. An really does feel for Sharon, you could see it in her eyes as she sang Babe. She was Sonny.

But I shall say no more. What happens in Singstar stays in Singstar.

There was one important thing that happened: I thrashed Ken at Wii Tennis. And then refused his fiver which he bet me all those months ago. I am smug.

Until I see the videos again.

Global Defence Force: they've taken London

On Steve’s recommendation, I’ve set up my PS2, dug out a memory card, and tried Global Defence Force, the predecessor to EDF2017. I’ve cleared ten or so stages now, and … well, it’s pretty much the same game. The menu structure is the same, the lack of autosave, the categories of weapons, the ability to play cooperatively. The “Hard” difficulty level is perhaps slightly easier. There’s a much greater variety of locations, with the very first being set in London, and travelling the world, going into the subway, to Tokyo …

Maybe it’s the lack of teammates, maybe it’s the lack of voiceover, maybe it’s the fuzzyness of the graphics compared to the shininess of EDF’s baddies, but it’s not quite as immediate fun as EDF was, to me. That may be, of course, because of the weapons I’ve picked up – I’ve only just got a reasonable homing missile launcher which can fire off 10 missiles a second, with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

I think the obvious fault is with the controls. I feel like I’m continually fighting to control my soldier, and the vehicles are an absolute nightmare to control – it’s far easier to just run around on the ground. This is a shame, since you get the feeling that using the tank or helicopter would add something to the game, but as it is I’ll never use them enough to get used to controlling them.

I will, of course, continue to play GDF, but more concurrently with EDF, and not as a replacement.

Now, interestingly, GDF is actually the second in the series, with the first being released over here under the name Monster Attack. I may need to track that one down.

Games by the coast

Over the back holiday, I went down to the coast with Matt, Gaby and Andrew, for a break away from London. We walked along the beach; we visited a vineyard; but most importantly, we played games.

We would have played Wii Sports, but when I opened the box I realised that it was still in my parents’ Wii. Horror. We had plenty to get on with, though.

We played Buzz!: the BIG Quiz and Buzz!: the Sports Quiz. I did better on the former, due in no small part to my lack of sports knowledge. Quite a fun game, though the presentation started to grate after a bit. Mr Buzz sounded very little like Jason Donovan.

We played Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. I pointed out the three or four minigames worth playing. We were in hysterics at the hurdles.

We played Wii Play. Andrew beat Matt quite comprehensively at pool.

We played Singstar. Oh, did we play Singstar. Waking up on Monday morning, I could barely manage a whisper. We did get Matt singing. We got Andrew singing to pop songs that he claimed he’d never heard. He claimed to have never heard “I Think We’re Alone Now”. That was the point that we knew he was fibbing. Gaby and I did some fabulous duets. I think we were both out of key to the same extent. We drank wine and whisky – not together, obviously.

We played Guitar Hero the next morning. I really am quite rubbish.

Canis Canem Edit: tasks in town

I’m now doing tasks in and around the town, not confined to the school. Since I’ve now completed art, English, chemistry and gym, I get two days off of lessons and then the third day has both photography and workshop in it. Workshop’s hard. The problem is that I’m always losing track of which day it is, so have to wait around to see if I should have lessons before leaving – reducing my time in town. It was worse before I completed English, because then I had to wait until after lunch …

Anyway, the posh kids don’t like me, and all the missions I’m doing at the moment seem designed to piss them off. Interesting survival technique. On the other hand, the posh girl does like me, and she’s almost as nice as the redhead. I managed to get them to have a catfight over me by snogging them both in turn in front of each other. Much fun.

Canis Canem Edit: I like the redhead

There are, it seems, no blonde girls at Bullworth Academy. But the redhead is lovely.

I’m now 15.63% through the game (it helpfully tells me) and … well, it’s good. It’s not amazingly great, but it’s very playable, with a good sense of humour, and nicely put together. There are some annoying aspects, like the fact that the bully gang just tries to beat you up all the time, and when you first start seemingly nobody likes you at all. There’s the rigid lesson structure, which at first I found a bit constraining but now it’s actually suiting the game a lot more – partially because I’ve realised that trying to complete the lessons gives you more spare time in which to do the missions.

I also like the timed aspect – the way that Hallowe’en came around and there were special themed missions. I’ve no idea whether it would have stayed Hallowe’en until you completed those missions, mind – whether it’s properly timed in terms of number of days played, or if it’s based on mission completion rates. But anyway.

I’ve completed the chemistry and gym classes, and have unlocked the photography and workshop classes. I’m really bad at English – making words out of random letters (those who’ve played Scrabble against me in the past can confirm that) – and I’ve failed the last art class once, so it should be possible. Other than that I’ve run one errand into town, and lots of errands for nerdy type people. And I’ve got the redhead to snog me. Several times.