The Lair of the Monkey

I got PGR3 a few weeks ago now and I’ve been pretty impressed with it.  The graphics are up there with Gears of War, the cars handle well and there are a lot of modes.  One issue though is the complete ease at which you can earn medals and trophies.  The second game was nowhere near as easy and comparatively it’s just proven to be a bit of a disappointment.  The game has a huge range of supercars, but gone are the minis etc of the original.  It now seems that there isn’t much progression.

One of the things that stands out is that maybe the game has been overdeveloped for online (Gotham TV allows you to watch races, best laps of others etc) so maybe that’s what has happened.  I mean yeah it’s a good game and definitely worth the purchase I guess I was just hoping for more.  Still, it does look great.  Just bear in mind you might spend more time playing time trials than the actual thing.  One last thing to note is the co-operative modes you can do on the same Xbox.  The splitscreen works well and it’s a lot of fun, so check it out.

A mate of mine has got much more into gaming recently, not least with the purchase of Fight Night Round 3.  He originally played in on the PS3, but of course they’re so damn expensive that he wasn’t going to buy one of those.  He got it for the 360 and loves the analogue controls and the graphics.  He also likes to whup his flatmates on it.  Anyway, I’m quite taken by his review so I’ve gone and ordered it.  At £17.99 from play.com it’s a veritable bargain!

Someone from work got a Wii for their birthday.  I’m surprised that he’s managed to get one, given the fact that they are still sold out.  I guess if you’re determined though it’s possible.  On principle only though I always wait until something is easily available before making the decision to purchase.  But that’s just me I guess.  Well, more updates on the way but I’m a bit busy tonight so they’ll have to be saved for tomorrow!

Yes, it’s just over three weeks away.  Not long at all now.  I guess for the hardcore it’s a bit of a wait though.  For me, I think it’s only about 31 days till Forza 2…

Let me say this first - as you’ll see I have put this post in ‘nex-gen’ and ‘retro’. Why?!? For a simple reason. Dead Rising is on a nex-gen platform but plays like a proper old school game. You can restart with your current level, you have to walk to a save point, there are numerous respawns (enemy and weapon) and quests that are a tad difficult. I don’t know about you but I found that I couldn’t complete it the first time out, Frank just wasn’t hard enough.

I’m not sure how people tackled the game, but it is obvious that it’s a case of two worlds colliding. It feels very much like West is trying to meet East here. Or perhaps vice versa. The reason being we have a very western story idea but with Eastern gameplay elements, such as the respawns and making saves into part of the gameplay. Overall, I think it’s reasonably successful but it does ask a few questions, as well as answering why Dead Rising is not to everyone’s tastes.

One of the things that I didn’t really like about Dead Rising (Xbox 360 btw) was how quickly it became frustrating. It wasn’t a ‘tense battle to survive’ but rather a teeth-gnashingly annoying experience when you died yet again trying to make it to an area with food to boost your health. I’m sure better players had this problem too - but maybe they just didn’t play DR in the same way that I did. I guess that’s one thing I’d love to see on Live - how the really top end players tackle stuff like this.

Dead Rising is to some degree a game of aesthetics - look how you can kill this zombie! Look how you can grab the sword and slice them! Look how you can’t get access to where the car is! Arrrrgggghhhhhhhh! I guess what really gets me is how I can see the potential but feel that I really don’t have the time to exploit it. Now that I’ve spent about 200 words talking about it though maybe I’ll go back for ‘just one more go’ today. Not sure though.

Well, frankly, to answer the eponymous question, not a lot.  Which is a shame.  But I have been insanely busy finishing off the last of my OU course and also revising for a biiiiiiiiiig interview which is related to the blog.  Kind of.  All will be revealed if I get the job.  Those of you who know me and what I’m on about, don’t mention it in the comments as I’m keeping it secret till it is a concrete ‘can do go siduation’ as Alan Partridge might say.  As I haven’t played many games over the week, I’m hoping to play a batch this weekend.  They’ll include:

• Gears of War
• Guilty Gears X2
• PGR3
• Ninja Gaiden
• Project Zero
• Oblivion
• Burnout Revenge

Who knows, maybe even Ikaruga on the Cube.  I tend to avoid that though because I know I’ll never be able to get as good as I once was.  But just a reminder, I was 49th best in the world for a brief few days.  I’d quite like to have another crack at Dead Rising but I’m not sure if I could trawl through it again.

Hmmm… Well I was loathe to do this given there aren’t many (good ones) but lets get on with the recommendations…

• MotorStorm
• Resistance: Fall of Man
• Virtua Fighter 5
• Formula One Championship Edition
• Fight Night Round 3

That’s your lot I’m afraid…

I thought I’d do a quick list of some games that I think you’d all like on the Xbox 360.  This is by no means a top ten, more of a ‘these are good‘ games list.

• The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion
• Lost Planet
• Dead Rising
• PGR3
• Test Drive Unlimited
• Guitar Hero 2
• Gears of War
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Las Vegas
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07
• Fight Night Round 3
• Condemned: Criminal Origins
• Saints Row

Of course, there are a big bunch of games coming out this year that look to eclipse most of these (to be fair the Xbox360 clearly doesn’t have a huge selection of triple A titles just yet) but these are pretty much the top pics right now, at least in the UK.

Recently I got PGR3 for the Xbox360 (review to follow soon) and I must say that the sense of speed on the game is brilliant.  When you’re rocketing toward 100mph (or even faster) you really feel like you are going at some pace.  It helps that the graphics are great and full of tricks like motion blur, but few games really catch a sense of speed in this way.

The other issue is the cars.  Whilst the PGR series has never claimed to be a simulator (Forza fills that gap on the Xbox) it does have well modelled cars using a pretty decent physics engine.  More to the point, in PGR3 you can genuinely feel the difference between the ‘drift’ cars and those which would have a completely flat line, such as the Ariel ATOM.  This means that you can have one type of car vs another to see which really handles the corners best.  So far, one of my favourites has been the Radical SR8 but more on that later…

The Halo 3 beta opens on May 16th until June 16th.  Computer and Videogames has a breakdown on the video we’ve seen so far - go there to see what they think.

The BBC has an excellent article on how game profitability is in trouble due to small user bases and rising developer costs.  This is in part why we see so many sequels, as developers and publishers don’t want to take risks on new products that may not sell.  On the other hand this strategy in itself will slowly strangle the game industry…