Babes, Babes and more Babes! / Platforming Fall
By trulyalive 10 Comments
Yes, the title was intended as a double entendre. Yes, I am aware it was not a very good pun. Yes, it's true: I suck.
Allow me to give you the debriefing of exactly what I've been doing since my last blogophon. I've been gaming.
Big fucking surprise, considering this is a gaming website. I wonder if I can get any more obvious, like, I don't know...explaining the above play on words...?
...Yeah, looks like I can: This Fall* I've been playing Platformers. All titles are for the Xbox 360, the run down is as follows:
- Mirror's Edge
Cyber Babe - Tomb Raider Underworld
- Prince of Persia
So first things first: Mirror's Edge. I want it to be known across the land that this isn't a First-Person Action Adventure game, it's a First-Person Platformer. You run, you jump from platform to platform: It's a platformer. And an adequate one at that...but that's all there is to say in summary. It's adequate but it never really hits it's peak. I enjoyed the campaign but the time trials are naught but a pain that really put me off revisiting the game in the near future. I suppose the only reason I'll play it again is to beat it on Hard with guns.
So far, I've played through the game twice, the first time on Normal and I was aiming to get the Test of Faith achievement. For those amongst you who aren't aware of what this is, basically you don't shoot anyone. So I did it. All the way up to the last level. Then in the server room (yeah, you guys who have played the game know what I mean...) some guy leaps out at me.I fired the gun to shoot out the server and he gets in the way.
I have to admit, I was devastated. I started wondering if the guy had a wife, a child, maybe a pregnant girlfriend with a set of quintuplets on the way. I had a dream that night that I (as Faith, naturally) broke into the morgue and checked his fingers for some level of reassurance that he wasn't married. He had no ring, so I decided to just steal whatever money he had in his wallet...but oh...as I checked his pockets...oh...I found...an engagement ring...OH THE HUMANITY ;_;
Anyway, after that heart breaking experience, I played a speed run on Easy in order to get the Test of Faith achievement and ploughed through the game in 1 hour and 45 minutes.
...
Moving swiftly along: Tomb Raider Underworld. Here is where if we were speaking face-to-face I would sigh. And not the 'Oh, that Lara Croft, she gets me off every evening.' kind of sigh (and you'll never hear that sigh because it doesn't exist...seriously o_O;). Much more the sigh that evokes feelings of adequate fulfillment, yet hollowing emptiness all at once.
Tomb Raider Underworld is a good game. It's got a decent plot and better dialogue than Tomb Raider Legend had. And some of the puzzles are actually kind of hard, which is nice to see in a series that is touted as a puzzle/platformer that usually finds itself late to work and forgets to bring the puzzle element of the experience to the office (not unlike how I can never remember my name badge...) but unfortunately that is around about where the praise stops. No wait, sorry, the graphical design is beautiful. But that's where the praise stops.
The level design rarely integrates the puzzles well and most of the annoying features of previous games is still here. Nothing particularly new in terms of gameplay, same old broken camera, the fact that Lara must secretly be that cop from Mirror's Edge that really wants to die, given how often she jumps south when I'm pointing North. I just don't understand this woman's death wish, it's inane, insane and excruciatingly frustrating
I suppose I can let her off because she's a total babe, although there will always be something unsettling about the girl of your dreams wielding what you are led to believe is a God's hammer, despite it looking like a hatchet. I suppose it's a good job this is just a video-game rather than real life-imagery because I would be feeling all weird inside were she not a digitally rendered computer graphics display. Not the good kind of weird either.
...I have got to stop finishing paragraphs on awkward moments. Maybe I should try starting one on an awkward moment instead...
So I'm in love with the Prince of Persia. Yeah. That will just about do it.
In all seriousness though...I don't like Men. I'd take Elika over the Prince any day and not just because she is the real babe of the game. More because she is probably my favourite gaming mechanic of the year.
That's right, screw your Dog, Fable. Screw your Mortar, Gears. Screw your Zombies, L4D (a: I don't know why the first 3 I thought of were X360 exclusives and b: I am thoroughly aware that all the images composed by this sentence are messed up.)
See, at first, I hated the thought of Prince of Persia, one of my favourite gaming franchises (thanks in large part to The Sands of Time trilogy) being tainted by a No Death sort of system, but as I came to play it, I realised it's just a checkpoint system without the loading screens and an excellent way to explain how the Prince can mess up the same trap so many times without dying and somehow being ressurected.
And then I became completely forgiving because this system gave way to what is perhaps my favourite Boss Battle/Puzzle since you had to face off against Psycho Mantis in MGS1. That's a bold claim to throw around and I know that not many people will agree with me, but I thought it was clever and enchanting. You'll see when you get there.
I don't want to say a great deal more about any of these games, because hopefully I'll be finding time to write up a review for each soon.
I am particularly broke so I won't be playing anything else until after Christmas and because of my last minute Prince of Persia purchase, it looks like Mom is going to have to go without a present this year. Sorry Mom!
In Non game related news: Both jobs are going ok, I crashed my moped last week and cut my legs up to fuck and my iPod is broke and I can't afford to buy a new one until after Christmas when I am going to be in debt and will already have a Gaming Chair, a Wii and about 15 games on the "To be purchased" list already. Great.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by.
B[o]ut.