Hello there. This is my blog. That's not a picture of me, but it's what I aspire to look like in my later years.
It's a blog touching on technology - APIs, Games, hardware; really if anything comes under my scrutiny I'll write about it ad nauseum.
I like goats, sleep and the banjo, although not always in that order.
Scotty came round a couple of days ago, and we had a big day of gaming. It was pretty awesome.
We played some Bayonetta (he agrees it's bonkers), and then fired up DJ Hero. We didn't play much else.
For the record, the Scratch Perverts tracks are utterly bonkers.
This (and 'beats and pieces') are probably the ones that hurt my arm the least.
I think the thing I like about it is that the samples are telling you they know it's a game, and they're looking to test you, but still with the insanely cool music. Anyway.
In other news, I've bought everything I can in Bayonetta, and I've been playing with some of the accessories. All I can say is, I wish I'd bought the one that triggers witch time earlier.
Makes clearing the levels the first couple of runs a lot easier. I had misread the description, and thought it was something entirely different (it triggered witch time at the start of combat, not when you're hit. D'oh).
However, the Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa (spelling?) is even better! Sort of. It gives you a 'repel' on incoming enemy attacks. That is, they're just ignored. It also stuns your attacker, giving you a nice opening.
However, if you repel as you're hit (like bat within), it will repel, counter and start witch time. And the witch time lasts maybe a second or two longer than normal. So you can get in an extra wicked weave or string of hits.
It also lets you trigger witch time against people like Jeanne. Very cool accessory.
I'm currently chasing Nunchuks. Really really want them. I've platinumed the first 5 stages. Which isn't a lot, but I refuse to use the same tactics as others, who reload levels when a verse goes badly. Plus, I need all the practice I can get.
I went back to Lego Batman last night and finished it up, got all the red bricks and minikits and stuff.
It's a cool game, but there are way too many different things you need to do. That is, in Lego Star Wars, you have light force, dark force, high jump, grapple, small people holes, droids and shoot targets, and that's about it. And later on, you can give jedi the ability to grapple and so on. You never need too many people in one level.
Conversely, Lego Batman has bombs, gliding, diving, glass to smash, things for the joker, things for the penguin, mind control, tech outfit, magnet suit, vacuum cleaner, high jump, grapple, poison, ice blocks, strong-man items, women-only doors. It means you're always switching between lots of characters, which quickly becomes boring. Especially when they'll put redundancy into levels. Like, Batman has a glide suit, so why do I need to include Killer Moth to glide. And the penguin has bombs, so why include Batman's bomb suit? Poison Ivy can jump high, do poison and the women doors, so why do I need catwoman?
All the characters are very cool, but I still end up thinking 'guh, too many people' on every level.
So, I've been playing some more Bayonetta. I kept thinking I'd pick up another game, and give that a go, but no. Bayonetta's pretty much owning me.
There are a few hidden levels called 'Alfheim' (I don't know how many) but I've found 7 while replaying levels 1-3. It's insane. The difficulty just keeps getting higher, and as anyone who's played it will know, trying to beat 3 angels, 4 flying things, Grace & GLory and Fairness and Fearless. And you can only be hit 3 times. And you've got to get 5 torture kills (not attacks, kills).
I mean, seriously? Of course, it doesn't help when I find videos on YouTube showing how it's done. Sadly, embeds are disabled, but here's a linky
Ok, so, what's been up? Well, I've taken a month (January) off work, to play video games.
I've been playing a bunch (take a look at the bottom of the post - I've included a link to a gamercard).
What's been taking most of my time is Borderlands, and Bayonetta. Oh, and on the PC, Torchlight. Borderlands is pretty sweet - first person shooter, but procedural weapon generation. What does this mean? It means that rather than meticulously programming each weapon, they have a bunch of variables, and when you find a weapon, it'll have a number of random stats - mostly adequate, rarely awesome. They've stolen the whole WoW categorisation, with grey, green, blue, purple, etc.
And the visuals are incredible - sort of cel-shading.
Apparently, it didn't used to look like that, it's something they changed during development, and (much like Crackdown) I'm very glad they did.
Also, it has levels, classes, and talents, as most games seem to have these days. Critical shots are in the head (or equivalent), and you get little numbers every time you shoot something.
The RPG elements tick the right boxes for me,
It's taken up far too much of my time (maybe 30 hours?) and I'm just starting to dabble with multiplayer. My only problem with online is that the matchmaking is a bit rubbish. You wait ages for the list to load, and then by the time you join a game, it might be full. Or the host may have changed the character he loaded with, so a level 1 game turns out to be a level 40 game. Bah.
If you had some friends with whom you could reliably play on a frequent basis, this game would be incredible.
Bayonetta. Well. What do I say that hasn't already been said? If you don't know it, here's the synopsis. Woman wakes up in lake 20 years ago. Has to fight/kill angels for reasons I don't want to ruin. Does so with terrifying elegance. Repeat.
The cut-scenes are awesome, in the original sense of the word - that is, they inspire awe. Indeed, they're quite the most ridiculous hing you can see in a game at the moment, which isn't to say they're bad - quite the opposite. They're, well, awesome. The game itself is very enjoyable - it's a fighter in the same vein as Devil May Cry. Given that the creator of DMC is behind it, you should realise that that means it's pretty much the most refined version of a brawler yet seen.
I never really played the DMCs, although I did spend a lot of time with DMC4, and also Ninja Gaiden (both Xbox and 360). I like the style, although the constant pushing of dodge is going to give me early onset of arthritis, I'm sure of it. But I digress. The core mechanic in Bayonetta is Witch Time - that is, the ability to slow down time when you dodge at the very last minute. Fortunately, most of the trash mobs have a habit of making a particular noise and flashing their weapons at the right time, which, after 30 minutes of head-melting, starts to make sense.
Then you remember parts of the tutorial, like extending combos by keeping your finger pressed down on a button after an attack to exit shooting (from your arms *or* legs), so a punch-kick-punch combo, which was really rather small, becomes something quite large. You're attacked, though, because it now takes longer. At which point you realise you can dodge from the attack during the combo still going, trigger witch time, continue the combo, and punch whatever tried to hit you in the head with your hair. Pity the foo'.
It's also very well paced - what you hope/pray is the boss on the first level (it's not) is actually just cannon fodder later on, when you're hoping/praying that you just missed the witch time trigger - these guys surely can't be immune, can they? (answer: yes they can).
Each chapter (there are many) is broken up into verses. Each verse is scored with a medal, so you have some idea of your progress. And, some verses are hidden, or at least require a lot of backtracking to find.
There's also currency, with plenty of things to buy, including new techniques, accessories, items and, of course, costumes.
I just finished my first playthrough, and got around 375 achievement points. That means there are still loads to go (replays on the two harder difficulty settings for example) and lots of things left to buy. My play history is largely littered with stone statues at the moment, so I need to go back and fix those first, as well as find some of the crazy hidden levels - 2 on the very first one that I should find.
I'm not going to lie - there are times Bayonetta feels really cheap - for example, there are creatures that, the first few times you fight them, you're left thinking 'how is that even possible?'. And, the final boss has one particular attack which feels like it's plain cheating (instant auto-kill) until you work out what you need to do, and even then, you can still die.
Anyway, gripes aside, Bayonetta's wicked. Download the demo, see for yourself.
Now, I work at Google, and we're not supposed to beat on Microsoft, so I'm not going to say a thing, and just embed this video, state a few facts, and let you make your own decision
All I will say is try to count how many of the customers in the place are paying any attention. And, if you make it to the end, look to see exactly who is clapping - that's right, it's the people who were dancing, and, erm, no-one else.
Also, it's the music from the JK dance song made famous here:
They can't even do something with their own theme tune? Oh well.
I was intrigued to learn that Shadow Complex a) has a bunch of cheats on the leaderboards (oh noes), and also that Microsoft are going to remove some of them from the leaderboard.
Plus, potentially delete their gamerscores.
Plus, tag their profiles as cheaters.
Bold.
Let's see if they actually go through with it.
It's still not entirely clear to me what constitutes a cheater, but since they're talking about leaderboards, I guess they mean people doing the trials in ridiculously short times, through exploits.
I grabbed this game pretty early on (I think, the day after it was released) and spent most of the weekend playing it. I had a great time - you can see from the gamercard below what I've been up to.
Although, since it looks like you have to log in to get access to that, how about this:
Also been playing Arkham Asylum (or at least, I was, before I came on a work trip), and I have to say, it's a freakin' incredible game, if a little short. I tapped the 'net for 2 of the hidden items, but otherwise, it was pretty much a cakewalk. I think I've got most of the achievements, too, without really struggling.
If you have an xbox.com account, I guess you can see them here: http://live.xbox.com/en-GB/profile/Achievements/ViewAchievementDetails.aspx?tid=%09];cn%2bh7%07%05&compareTo=Lord+of+Goats
It's a shame you can't publicise those more, uhm, publically, though.
Anyway, I'm just mopping up the combat challenges, which are pretty fun. In fact, the combat in general is pretty awesome - once you get into the rhythm, it's really nice. My only complaint is that counters don't always work as expected.
Much like Tycho, I also grabbed the demo for Section 8. I'd never heard of it, and the intro movie literally left me breathless. I played it a bit, but as with most demos, it was a lot of people running around like headless chickens. I'm tempted to pick it up, though. It's looks like it has legs.
