New week(s) and new toys. Actually it is less toys for me. Been getting rid of some of my consoles. Sold my older Nintendo consoles. Just GB/A,GC,DS and Wii left. Was contemplating quite long if I keep the SNES or not. Especially since I had quite a good selection of games for it. Zero-FX, Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening, Lost Vikings and some others. And also because I have yet played this Links Awakening through yet. There is a GBA version of it out which I prefer.

Not that there is an audience/interest, but should have a banner for my humble blog next week. As usual apologies for the spelling and extra apologies goes for the nasty language. Not sure where that is coming from. On with the recent games:

Final Fantasy V

Finally done! I used closer to 50 hours on this. And must say this is my favourite of Final Fantasy now, but I've only played the first five games so far. I know that the IV is big favourite amongst FF fans, but I didn't like it too much. Probably because I played the DS version. The 16-bit style graphics on GBA work so much better and has much more charm. Even if the music is not as good or the screen is smaller. Back to V, for a good part of the first half the story was very deflating, but it picked up little more after the "big reveals" about half way through. My 50h on this game cover's pretty much everything/side quest/class/summon/ Only missed few Blue Magic spells. Also good indication how well I was prepared on the final boss was that he didn't touch me even, once. Next one in the series will be FF6, got the GBA copy of this already. Won't be starting this straight away though.

Lara Croft and the Long Title

Oh dear, this was odd. My brother was travelling for few weeks, so had to finish this on my own. Needless to say, it is not as fun solo. After the first few hours I would have said that this is an excellent game. After finishing the game I would say that this is just OK. This is because of the strange issues I(we) came across. Earlier when playing the co-op we got stuck for 5 minutes because of a red skull. Went through an route that we were not supposed to. Odd the level would even allow this. Later on, when playing solo on the last level before the boss. I entered a closed area called: The Arena. There was a huge shield mob, fire golem and one other big enemy. Problem was that I had no ammo, could throw the puny spear at them. Which is no good against the big mobs. There is a way to kill the enemies by leading them to these lava rock spots, but that was extremely time consuming. And kind of hard. Game auto-saves so often that I had no change to go back. Would have needed to restart level, which no-one likes of course. Ended up cranking the difficulty to easy to get past this. Such a shame because that literally tarnished my experience. This game has lot's of promise, but falls short. Co-op is definitely the way for this. Need to see if we go back to this and play it through.

MotorStorm: Pacific Rift

Haven't played a PS3 game in a while and wanted play some racing game. So and ideal candidate?! This is one good looking racing game and at times it is fun. But mostly, freaking chore. The driving is just too chaotic and unfair. Shame really, but I can only play this in small dozes. My wife doesn't speak Finnish, but she knows enough swear words to calls this Vittu-game (not going to translate vittu, but it something not so nice) since I tend to swear a bit when playing this. Don't have really desire to play the Apocalypse game anymore. The first MotorStorm was just about enough with the silliness. Pacific Rift is just as unfair and dumb as the first game. Which is major disappointment. They had an opportunity to make this game more fun. Or dare I say: easy. What really bugs me here is that, because the janky physics and the cheating AI unfair why does the game insist on showing the crashes in such detail and slow speed. So infuriating! The typical scenario here is when you had two perfect laps and loose your first spot on the last turn when crashing to a stone or landing a jump differently. BS. Must admit that the PSP version of these MotorStorm games is my favourite still.

Lost in Shadow

Right, this is interesting. Lost in Shadow the moody Wii exclusive silhouette platformer. Game starts off really well and all and all looks pretty good. It has a nice somber-like feeling over it and a suiting low-key soundtrack. Can't talk about this game without comparing it to Limbo of course. Biggest difference is that Limbo was just a suitable short, maybe even too short. Lost in Shadow in other hand is ten times longer game. Or at least feels like that. Actually Lost in Shadow can be beaten in about ~15hours. Anyone who has seen the trailer or the QL know what's going on. The shadow boy needs to climb the tower to get his body back. And I've done that now. Kind of. I've climbed to the top of the tower, which is about 54 floors/levels. It started to feel like a bore after 20 floors already. Puzzles and battles are mostly the same. Would compare this game as album of some monotonous sludge doom, which I normally like. But try to listen that for 10h or just one song?! At the top of the tower there is nice surprise waiting. From your descent you got one shard, but you need 5 more. So back to the previous levels! Fuckers. Yes, backtracking the worst possible way. So I am quitting here. I got to the top and that's it, clock says ~10h and ~60% of the game done. After some reading it seems that there is couple of further levels and a boss battle which I missed. Or won't miss. Youtube is savior for such. Really a shame because the game is promising and puzzle platformers are always interesting.

 
NHL10 & Bad Company 2

Some multiplayer action with my brother   

Spiral Knights

 
indieeeeeeeee....

Proun

A strange indie racer that is pay what you want funded. Works well on my fucktard netbook which was a surprise this being such a visual game. Very simple and very indie. There is not much to this other than steering the ball left and right. Kind of like modern/artsy version of Trailblazer.

Epic Dungeon

Been filling the wiki and wrote and an review for it. In my opinion this is the best Xbox Live Arcade Indie Game.

Platformance Temple Death

Right, another good XBLI game. Sequel of some sort to the Platformance Cast of Pain. This is more polished than the first game. Magiko (the devs) who also have released two other (shit) XBLI games, released a patch for Temple Death recently. Which actually allows player to finish the game. Ok, maybe it was not so harsh, but there was literally one part I could not get past. Strange/random timing was required. After the patch I am able to do it every time on first try. Oh right, might as well write about the game as well. Platformance Temple Death is single screen platformer with 8-bit graphics. Lot is borrowed from Super Meat Boy with it's brutal difficulty, endless life's and 8-bit visuals. Even on the easiest difficulty the game is hard, which is written as normal difficulty. The next level is Hard which as the name implies hard, very hard. The cool thing here is that the harder difficulties have the same game and level design, just added spikes, fire and what not. I couldn't even get past the third obstacle on the hard difficulty. Nightmare, well it speaks for itself. Game is made longer than the 1st game by having you backtrack the whole level with the damsel, which is not as bad as you think. Pretty decent game for 80ms that I would recommend this

Aban Hawkins & the 1000 SPIKES

A yet another horrible difficulty XBLIG game and not too different from the game above. Bought three now (this + both Platoformance games) difficult XBLIG games now. Only 80MS pop though. The old-school gameplay is awesome as are the pixelated visuals and chiptune music. But damn, this is freaking hard. Even harder than Temple Death. The concept/term masocore is perfect fit. You got 1000 lives travel throught bunch of excruciating platform levels. Game lends lot from Rick Dangerous, that Indiana Jones look-a-like cave treasure hunter from the early 90's. You need to travel through treacherous caves to get hold of an artifact. This feels even harder than Super Meat Boy, if that is even possible.

Tale of Tales

Got the Tale of Tales bundle while back when it was PWYW. Breezed through all of these in couple of evenings.

The Graveyard

The bizarre grandmother goes graveyard simulator. Interesting. And I didn't know it had two endings.

Fatale

Way more game that then The Graveyard, but same time really revealing that these guys really don't know much about gameplay. Sure blowing off the candles is neat mechanism, but couple had been enough. Not 20 or whatever the number is. I still did all of those all, with moderate swearing.

The Path

This is no doubt longest of these three and most videogame-like. Still not a game I want to play ever again. The Path has a rather nice atmosphere, but the gameplay leaves lot to be desired for. Game is a third person exploration in Little Red Riding Hood setting. With wonky camera/controls and the amount of repetition this has. It is easy to admit that this is not fun.. The problem I have with all these three is the same I had with Braid. These might be different and artistic games, but that doesn't make these good videogames. Waste of money to be honest.

Cat and the Coup

Even more of the same. This might be harsh thing to say, but Cat and the Coup is not as pretentions as the Tale of Tales games, thanks to the nonexistent price tag and game being more factual. This feels more like an indie showcase where the above are pure art games. This one is great little informative adventure game. Mix that strange artsy gameplay with more madness from Samorost and you got Cat and the Coup. Available free on Steam, recommend checking this out. 

Random Youtube video of the week

.I understand that these aren't weekly, but it just rhymes better.Unseen from latest The Haunted album. You can say what you want about this album, but it sure has some catchy songs. Such as this title track. It is no DOA material, but still OK. And something my wife can handle. She is saying I am turning soft because I am listening to Rush and The Haunted pop-record.