Gaming Weekend: High Scoring Edition
Perhaps to compensate for last week’s rather paltry gaming, I went on a tear this weekend and played games nearly the entire time. Not only did I have a blast but I got some friends involved, came to a sad conclusion, brought a new system into the family, cleared out some demo backlog and gained my proudest Achievement on the 360 to date. Intrigued? Then forge ahead my friend.
Forge ahead.
Destiny, Perhaps?
Last week I mentioned that I was hoping to get down to the new game store in town to play in their Twilight Imperium match Friday night. Well, I didn’t make it because my wife wanted to spend some time with our friends as we’ve lately slipped into some mis-matched schedules and we haven’t seen them as often as we had been. The stars kind of aligned and we went out to dinner and headed back to our friends’ place to hang out for a bit.
My friend Jenn has had a DS (pink, naturally) for some time now after someone showed her Animal Crossing: Wild World and she loved it. I have the game as well and we’ve talked about it a few times but had never really gotten around to trying to visit each other’s towns. On the way out the door Friday night I grabbed my DS just in case there was a chance to be found where I could wrest some of her sweet, exotic oranges out of her town to appease the ever demanding taskmaster/loan shark that is the hated Tom Nook.
So during a short lull in the conversation I nipped out to the car and grabbed my device and implored some wireless Animal Crossings. Jenn and I visited each other’s towns and I came away with pocketfuls of oranges while she gathered up apples and peaches (the peaches being from a visit from another friend months ago) from my humble hamlet (the quiet, mature town of Pooville). That was kind of fun and exciting but while the DS’ were out I figured, “Why not show her some other games?” So I quickly introduced her to Planet Puzzle League and handed off control of my DS to my wife. Jenn and Nik played for a little while and then I pulled out Puyo Pop Fever.
You should probably understand that years ago (circa 1998) a group of us that hung out on a daily basis were heavily addicted to a Puyo variant for the SNES that was called Kirby’s Avalanche. Nik, Jenn and her husband Jay were among those in that group so in that household Puyo was certainly not an unknown property. Suffice to say that once I got the three of them started we all took turns battling in the two player mode—although to be fair most of the evening was spent trying to unseat Nik from her lofty perch as Puyo master.
Puyo Pop Fever has a concession that Kirby’s Avalanche lacked which is Fever mode where a pre-engineered board is presented and you only need to find the correct placement of the pieces given to start a massive chain reaction that can spell imminent doom for your opponent. Nik grokked this mode instantly and her Fever mastery made her a formidable opponent indeed. I think a good time was had by all; I certainly enjoyed myself. After we got into the car to go home, Nik turned to me and said, “I think I want a DS.” I’m positive that if there had been some kind of 24-hour establishment in town that carried Nintendo products, we would have driven directly there to get her one, such is the desire I’ve had to hear her say those words. The fact that I bought her a separate copy of Animal Crossing so she could have her own town should be testament enough to the fact that I feel this device could reach across the line into the territory of those normally uninterested by video games, but my secret selfish motivation is that I crave the presence of a regular opponent.
I woke early the next morning and, under the guise of procuring breakfast pastries while she slept in, I hurried to the nearest electronics-stocking store and bought her one DS Lite, in Onyx. She seemed pleased with the gift, and last night her and I played some more Planet Puzzle League and Puyo Pop Fever before I had to leave for work. It was delightful.
Held in the Hand
That wasn’t the extent of my DS experience, however. I also received a copy of Trace Memory via a very unusual Goozex trade in which the seller happened to live in the same town as I do so she decided to drop it off at my house instead of mailing it. I kind of took her to task about it but she meant no harm and was just trying to get the game to me faster and hadn’t thought about the potential problems her decision entailed. In any case I chalked it up to “no harm, no foul” and played a little bit of the game. I’m not very deep into it at all but it’s a very strange little game and I’m looking forward to getting into it a bit more.
I also played through some more of Meteos, speaking of strange games. I got into a conversation on the Goozex forums about Meteos and how it isn’t really a puzzle game in the sense that there is hardly any strategy involved because you have so little control over how the pieces align themselves that your capacity to plan ahead is very restricted. Since a lot of puzzle games rely on your ability to interpret patterns and make forward-thinking moves that will enable you to achieve greater gains with a single move or placement, Meteos is so odd in that it focuses so much more on improvisation and adaptability. Put it this way, there have been no other puzzle games I can think of that you can ever be successful in by merely moving a bunch of pieces around in a random, frantic manner. But in Meteos, this sometimes works wonders.
In any case I completed a couple more of the progressive modes and did some of the timed modes for a bit before I happened to skim through an online guide for the game that indicated there was a broader meta game involved that took into consideration how many of each type of block (or “Meteo” if you will) you had eliminated. I haven’t yet returned to the game to explore this aspect, but hopefully next weekend I will have a chance to do so. It sounds fascinating.
During a moment of zen-like tranquility I decided to pick up Trauma Center again. As with so many games that I find to be really difficult or even frustrating but that continue to compel me, the more I come back to Trauma Center the further I get into it… eventually. I can’t quite explain why I can attempt a given surgery dozens of times in a row in one sitting and finally turn the game off in agitation, usually declaring loudly that the operation is “impossible” or theorizing that the computer is somehow engaged in some kind of nefarious subterfuge, only to turn it on again a few days later and breeze through the same surgery on the first try. With this game that cycle is elongated until I’ll end up attempting some surgeries upwards of thirty or forty times before I get it right, but usually when it finally clicks it kind of seems like there was no real reason for me to not have finished it earlier.
Lastly on the DS, I popped Metroid Prime Pinball in again and after a bit more experimentation I finally “got” the Multi-Mission mode which in turn led to me having a more complete understanding of the game as a whole and I decided after a couple of weeks of uncertainty that I really like the game. There are a couple of things about it I wish were a little different such as the hit detection with some of the enemies (especially the Metroids) and the controls on the battle modes but overall it’s a very well thought-out game that combines the pinball aesthetic and the license in a very fluid manner. It also helped to finally realize that playing with the shoulder buttons instead of the face equivalents wears out my arms far too quickly. There’s just no comfortable way to hold the device and concentrate on those shoulder buttons for long periods of time and when you get into a groove on that game, it can go for quite a while.
How To Say This Without Gloating
Let’s move on to the 360. I’ll start with the part that is most thrilling to me: A little game I’ve grown addicted to for the second time called Geometry Wars.
If you’ve been following Gaming Weekend you’ll know that I’ve been playing this game regularly for a couple of months now. This is after it being one of the first XBLA titles I purchased nearly a year ago when I got the console and playing quite a bit of it then but getting stuck in the 250K range and sort of giving up. Eventually I showed the game to my buddy Doug and he got hooked, purchased the game and promptly slaughtered my high score with a ~475K game. The mesa seemed insurmountable and I had other games to occupy my time so I moved on.
Then several weeks ago I was looking through some less frequently played games and I noticed GW and how I was still #2 on the Friends Leaderboard. I decided this could not stand, so I picked it up again. The addiction came roaring back and after an incredible number of tries I finally beat Doug’s score first with a 500K point game and then finally with a game in the 620K range. That score stood for some time while I struggled to consistently reach 500K.
So on Friday afternoon I was fiddling with the game prior to leaving the house to run a few errands and without really thinking about it I found myself having a great game. As I always suspected the key to a great run is how far you get on your first life. The longer you can let that initial Multiplier streak rack up, the better you do because the extra lives and extra bombs start to come at a pretty steady clip after the action heats up and each enemy you shoot starts being worth three hundred or more points. So I’m four hundred thousand points in with six lives and four bombs left and I’m really on a roll. Sadly I died before I got the Survived 500,000 Achievement but I was still in really good shape with a very solid score. I had a couple of good follow up runs and each time I got close to the Game Over I would go on a tear and earn a couple extra lives at least to keep me in the game. Eventually I get well above Doug’s score, 800K and climbing with four extra lives, but I’m running out of bombs. I find a groove in the 865,000 point neighborhood and get a decent multiplier going which nets me a second bomb and then a fifth life. For the first time I start to fantasize about the million point mark and suddenly I let too many of those space-sucking red rings build up and unleash their hyper-quick blue homing rings at me and I can’t stem the tide. But no problem: Four lives, two bombs, 885K. My next life goes quickly from an unfortunate weapon switch and I waste a bomb without even really extending a multiplier. But it could be worse. I start again and this time I live through a wave of those tiny little triangular purple dudes which helps my multiplier but costs me my last bomb. It gets hairy for a few minutes but I realize I was close to getting a new bomb and just in time I’m granted one and use it but my victory is short lived as I’m swarmed by five or six red horseshoes with their shot-deflecting front shields. My third life is over almost immediately from a poor turning decision and I check the score: 947,000 with one extra life and no bombs. I think I can make it, I just need one decent run.
Alas, this life is over quickly as well. It’s getting serious and I didn’t make nearly enough progress with those last two loves, barely getting even a 3x multiplier. This life has to last. Sweating and determined now I start in trying to stave off death for those precious early seconds until I can get in the groove. I make it to a 4x multiplier thanks to a swarm of the lavender cubes that split into smaller cubes when you shoot them but die when a snake swarm materializes underneath me while I have to place to go. I’m almost afraid to look but I have no choice. I glance up and see it: 973,450. I’m less than 30,000 points from a million. My anguished cry scares the cat out from behind the couch and she dashes up the stairs for safety. In frustration I hold down the jewel button and choose to shut off the machine: We have somewhere to be anyway. At least, I think, I beat Doug’s score. I have to call him to tell him about it.
When I power on the 360 later that day I find something horrible staring at me on the Friends Leaderboard for Geometry Wars: nothing. I guess in my haste to shut down I didn’t give the machine enough time to log my score and it is gone, no proof of my masterful run that was almost Achievement-worthy. My heart breaks a little, especially when I recall that Doug will probably check for my score and when he sees it missing, will question the truth of my story. I call him and let him know what happened. I can almost seem him smiling as he shakes his head. That’s the way it goes, I guess. But with no proof, the score doesn’t count. My now-miserable previous high in the 600K range is still the top, completely surpassable. I decide there is only one thing to do: I have to get 900K or more. Again.
Saturday morning while Nik sat playing Animal Crossing on her new black DS I turned on the game just to see how it would go. On my first game I blow past one million and end up losing with 1,175,000 points. I don’t even call Doug this time, I just send him a message over Live. It says, “Peep the GW score.”
Not Just XBLA Anymore
I didn’t just play Geometry Wars this weekend either. I also put in some effort on Enchanted Arms which in spite of my continual griping about how I can’t get into it I keep putting it in. It’s not a great game but I do have to concede that it does a few things very well and since one of the things it has going for it is the interesting strategic combat system, it keeps me coming back. I also popped in Gears of War again and—as with Trauma Center—inexplicably managed to blow past a checkpoint that had given me fits previously.
I also put in Viva Piñata for a bit and had some fun emptying out my original garden in a massive sell-off while I concentrated on improving my second, more experienced attempt. I did learn how to do variants this time and had fun turning various Piñatas purple and blue by making them eat weird stuff but for every thing I find about that game to make it more endearing I find two things about it that drive me nuts. My current agitation is that you can’t adjust the speed of time: I’d love to occasionally skip over the night cycle, especially when I’m concentrating on diurnal animals.
A few games that got just a few minutes of play here and there were Pac-Man CE and Marvel Ultimate Alliance (which went back to GameZnFlix). Plus I put in some real time on Rockstar Table Tennis and messed with the online stuff a little. Unfortunately this is one of the few games where playing against a human opponent is actually less fun than playing the computer because humans are often less prone to the kinds of mistakes you can elicit from the AI opponents which means you have less actual control over the outcome other than not actively making mistakes. Frequently it seems to come down to who gets unlucky. I think this has a lot to do with the gameplay I touched on last week which is surprisingly deep but still not deep enough. It’s not a bad game by any stretch and the fact that I played over 50 single-player matches in order to unlock all the characters says a bit about how viable the game is but I’ll say this: After those 50 matches and then determining that playing online wasn’t very fun, I was more than happy to send the game back and see what else I have coming.
The rest of the XBox activity was left to a couple of OXM demo discs I hadn’t worked through and I got a chance to try a few XBLA titles I probably wouldn’t have tried otherwise (although none of them were compelling enough to buy or anything) and I fiddled with a few of the full game demos. The only one that was at all intriguing was Eternal Sonata which is a beautiful, beautiful game. I don’t think I can ever properly express how much I love cell-shaded, anime-style graphics in games. And Eternal Sonata’s are some of the best I’ve seen. The game plays in an interesting real-time way that still smacks lightly of turn-based: Essentially each player starts their turn in a kind of paused state where you can plot out your move, but once you take any action at all a counter starts and you have maybe 45 seconds to carry out as many moves as you can before your turn is over. There is also an interesting light/dark dynamic that both PCs and enemies can (and do) take advantage of plus they’ve included an interesting interactive defensive mechanic that lets you play a little timing-based game to try and perform a block to reduce the damage inflicted. The demo is very light on story elements so I can’t say how well that bit is going to work and the in-battle voice overs got pretty repetitive but I thought the boss fight at the end was exciting and the battles were overall quite enjoyable. I don’t know yet if this is enough of a game for me to buy but I’ll definitely put in on the GameZnFlix and/or Goozex queues and see how the reviews go.
Wait, There’s Another Console?
The last game of the weekend is another Goozex acquisition which is actually a game I played a long time ago (2002, by the date on my save file) but I picked up mostly for the collector’s value: Robotech Battlecry. I’m a huge Robotech fan and while the game had it’s problems and it wasn’t terribly well received, I loved it and I decided after seeing how cheap it was on Goozex that I wanted to own a copy so I played through a couple of missions right as the weekend was ending. It’s exactly as I remember it and I’m glad I have a copy to play with, even if it isn’t something all that new.
One strange thing that’s only partially related: It’s been quite some time since I played anything on the PS2 (since Dragon Quest VIII about this time last year) and I realized that the PS2 controller feels incredibly light and insubstantial in my hands after playing with the 360 controller for so long. Also, I can’t tell if the texture on the left thumbstick has just worn down on my DualShock 2 which gives it an unpleasant feel or if there is some sticky residue on it, but it feels disgusting. I’m going to try wiping it down next weekend with some cleaning solvent and see if that helps. If it doesn’t I’ll try my older one but I need to get it comfortable again because my next couple of Goozex titles are for the PS2 and I need to be happy playing it or these games are a waste of time.
Have Patience, Have Patience, Don’t Be in Such a Hurry
It’s no secret that I’ve been coveting an HD TV for a couple of years now. But lately it’s starting to become more like a consuming obsession as it has seeped into my dreams and caused thoughts of a dark and sinister nature. A few months back my wife and I were talking about it and I came up with a perfectly reasonable plan which involved paying off an existing debt (which should happen by January) and using the money we’re accustomed to paying toward that debt to save for an HD TV, instead of applying that money back into our general fund. She agreed and it was a perfectly reasonable plan. It was really beyond reasonable: It was—and is—a very good plan. Responsible. Practical. Mature.
But also entirely unbearable. I’ve noted with pained powerlessness that Amazon.com is selling the exact model of HD TV I crave (the Samsung LN-T4661F for those keeping track) for a reasonable $2,000 with free shipping. I can do nothing, as it is not part of the plan to take advantage of fabulous short-term deals. I’ve taken stock of our savings account which contains sufficient funds for not only a new TV but also an HD-capable A/V reciever, speakers and probably a PS3 as well (for the Blu-Ray, obviously). Yet those savings are for the ephemeral “future” and not part of the plan. No matter how I slice it, there is no loophole in the plan, and the plan’s only flaw is that it requires discipline and patience which, normally I have an ample supply of but when matters of superhot technology are concerned, I draw from a pool so dry it cannot even be classified as a desert, they must invent a new type of landscape whose definition consists of “a place where moisture is only an abstract, theoretical concept.”
My only approach now is to try as hard as I can to convince myself that I have done everything there is to do: I’ve exhausted all avenues, I’ve searched for any chink in the armor of the plan and found it impregnable. This can only indicate that the plan is good and foolproof and should be adhered to fastidiously and without reservation.
I didn’t say it was a good approach, I said it was my only approach. It is either that or madness, and I’ve already spent that token, long ago, when the Earth was young.