A disService to a Rally Game.

Yesterday I found in the Oxfam Bookshop close to where I live a copy of Sega Rally for the PS3 for £2.99 new and sealed!  I felt like a thief buying it and will feel like a vandal when I open it.  I almost feel that it is a shame that games are sometimes undervalued by some shops, even though another part of me enjoys finding and buying games at a bargain price.

I am almost tempted to sell it and buy myself a second hand copy on ebay but I know I won't.  It is on my list of PS3 games I still want and it was cheap so I suppose I'm allowed to have it but I have not played much of Motorstorm yet so I will play more of that before I move on to another racing game.

inFamous - Bourne to be Bad

Today a posted a new video on my YouTube channel.  It is a quick sample of gameplay from the first Infamous game on PS3.  You can watch it here: (apologies, I have since removed this).

I have so far found the game fun to play and there seems to be plenty to do.  In one mission it was quite hard to find the locations I was supposed to be visiting but generally it has been well signposted.

This is one of quite a few PS3 games I've been posted sample videos of lately.  You can find a link to my YouTube channel in the left column of this page.

One PS3 game I have played lately but will not be posting a clip of is The Bourne Conspiracy.

The Bourne films contain intense fighting and shooting and great improvisation by the lead character.  Think of the first film where JB is in a house in a remote part of France and looks around to find a shotgun and ammo and then shoots a propane tank to create a plume of smoke and moves around a wide area under the cover of it.  In the second film he fights using a rolled up magazine as a weapon.

In both scenes you are given the sense that if these improvisations had not been available he would have thought of something else; as you are at other points in the trilogy.  The Bourne Conspiracy features no choices or opportunities for using initiative.  Just linear and clumsy shooting and fighting.  I cannot recommend it.  The only proviso I would make to this is that I could stand so much and no more so have not played the game to the end.

New Playlist on YouTube: Neverwinter Nights 2

I have recently started putting new vids on my YouTube channel so I am also going to re-start using this blog to make a diary of all my gaming related activity.  This will include what I am playing, what I am watching and posting on YouTube and my thoughts on what I read in the gaming media.

I have recently started a playthrough of Neverwinter Nights 2.  I have not played the game for a good while so in the early videos I am feeling my way a bit but I am now up to part 14 (the clips are generally 15-20 minutes long), and I'm getting a bit more fluent.

This is a link to my channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/PetracoGaming/featured

The characters and script of the game are where it's charm is and plenty of more modern and technically sophisticated games could learn a thing or two from it.  Whenever a new character is introduced it is obvious that the writers have made an effort to develop them rather than simply writing them a few lines which are purely for information.

Well done to Obsidian for this classic but will there ever be a Neverwinter Nights 3?

Dragon Age Origins on PC and Assassin's Creed Revelations on PS3

I have played through quite a bit more of Dragon Age Origins than described in the last entries, but I'm not going to describe it all in detail here mainly because I cannot remember it all.  I will go through the main points.

After leaving Lothering I went to Redcliffe.   I met the people I was supposed to meet and when I was convinced there was nothing further to do in preparation I said "Bring on the night and the accompanying attack of the undead".

The zombies were not too hard to fight off by Dragon Age standards, though I clumsily let one significant NPC die (I cannot remember his name).

After it was all over I went to Castle Redcliffe where I had more problems.  The battle in the castle courtyard was a real pain and after several attempts and several views of the hated "Your Journey Ends..." screen I won this one by a slight fluke.  The very tough enemy crossed the courtyard to take on my party but his allies hung back and did not seem to notice us so I got the chance to finish the big guy off first.

I went into the Castle to find that the zombie invasions of the town were being caused by the Arl of Redcliffe's stepson who had been possessed by a demon.  He had also poisoned the Arl.  I sorted out the immediate problem but the Arl remained ill and his wife theorised that Andraste's Ashes (a religious artefact lost in the mists of time) might make him better so, since scholars have failed to find it for centuries and as I also have a darkspawn horde to fight I am the obvious person to go and look for it.

Having picked up some more work to do from the Chanters and Blackstone Irregulars I made my way to Denerim.  On the way I was waylaid by an assassin hired by Teyrn Loghain.  He had quite a few friends and killed my party a couple of times before I killed him.  As he lay dying he seemed to have enough energy left to say "Hey, why don't I join your party..." but I finished him off and we went on our way.

The city of Denerim is a world in itself and you travel between one location and another and can be attacked along the way just as you can in the wider world.  You first arrive in a market area and most of the game's main groups have a base there where you can pick up and cash in jobs.  This was the first time I encountered the mage's collective and I picked up work from them as well as from the Chanters and Blackstone lot.  By now I have so many quests either not done or half done that I was beginning to feel a bit swamped.

It was in Denerim, while trying to clear out some Blood Mages (kind of like necromancers) from their base in a warehouse that I met my first serious problems.  By the time I got to the leader, who had three allies with him, my party had one Greater Health Poltice and no ingredients for making others.  Morrigen had a Drain Life spell which she could sometimes us to improve her own situation but that was it.

I spent more than half a day repeatedly trying to win this fight and failing and just started to hate and resent the game so much.  I especially hated the fact that the leader had a fireball spell which, in this enclosed environment just seemed like a "you lose" button he could press when he felt like it.

I went to bed having still not got passed it but in the morning I realised I should have just gone back to the market and bought all the health poultices I could find and returned with them.  So that's what I did and I won the fight at the third attempt.  The fireball was still very annoying, though.

I have recently started playing AC Revelations on the PS3.  My first impression of it was positive.  Its version of Constantinople is a beautiful city and full of colour.  But it is for its understated lack of novelty that I like it best.  The ordinary houses and buildings of the city take me back to the less spectacular areas of Florence from ACII.

Constantinople - Between Florence and Acre.

Unfortunately, there seems to be less content than in Brotherhood, though that is yet to be seen for sure.  The fact that the city is smaller does not concern me but that there is less to do does.  The real problem with the game is that the real story is happening not to Ezio, who only has a bunch of sidequests to perform which are cobbled together and called a game.  The real story is Desmond's story.  After all his time in the animus his brain is coming apart and the memories Ezio is catching up on in Constantinople are even described by Subject 16 as a few leftovers which need mopping up (or words to that effect) if Desmond is to recover.

When Ezio arrives in Constantinople he soon finds himself in an underground environment where a workman is trying to break through an impenetrable door.  The door requires several keys in order to be unlocked and that appears to be the game.

As Ezio travels around the city he encounters animus data fragments.  When he has collected enough you can go back to being Desmond (hooray!) and do a 3D platforming puzzle (first person).  As Des goes through the stages of this he agonises boringly about his past life in a wining fashion that anyone would enjoy listening to.  What the culmination of all this will be I do not yet know.

How the same writers who created the aloof and taciturn Ezio also came up with the self obsessing Desmond remains a mystery.

Despite all these complaints and despite one or two glitches with the controls I am enjoying Revelations and will write more about it soon.

I have received Need for Speed Undercover through the post today.  I have never played this one and I saw a clip on YouTube of a race featuring wide roads and fast corners and had to have it.

Dragon Age: Origins on PC

Okay, I got it wrong.  Going into the Fade was never part of Initiation.  It comes later in the game and I have now got to that bit, but I'm not going to write about today as there is loads more to cover.  What I'm going to write today follows on from the previous entry.

After Teyrn Loghain's betrayal the tower which my character (Ank) and Alistair are at the top of fills with Darkspawn and we are both overcome...

Miraculously, we are not torn to shreds.  I wake up in bed in Flemmeth's hut.  Flemmeth is Morrigen's mother and lives in the Kocari Wilds (I got the name wrong last time).  She is apparently a famous and powerful witch but there is some doubt about who she really is but whoever she might be she must be powerful to have saved us from the Darkspawn.  (I am going to write about my character in the first person from now on).

I now set out with Alistair, Dogmungus (see previous entry) and Morrigen (at Flemmeth's request) to unite the people of Ferelden against the Darkspawn.  Alistair and I are the only Grey Warden's left since the disastrous battle and it is our duty.  Morrigen is clearly more morally flexible and has no time for such quests.  I am trying to play a fairly selfish, neutral sort of character myself but it is sometimes hard to fit that in with taking on the responsibility of a noble purpose.

We leave the Wilds and travel to the village of Lothering.  There we are introduced to the Chanters' Board, the Chanters being a group of religious types who want work doing, and the Blackstone Irregulars, who also have tasks for us to perform and are a fairly down to earth group who are trying to fight the Darkspawn.  These two groups have liaisons in all the major locations in the game and you can cash in work done for them with any of their representatives.  I accept all the jobs that are on offer from them and some others from a woman who is trying to help the large number of refugees who are fleeing the Darkspawn and have taken up residence in the town, plus other work from local people.

We have to kill several groups of bandits in the area (the area around the village is referred to
 as a forest; there are no trees).  There is also group of giant spiders and another of bears to take out.  There is also a bit of gathering of stuff to do.

When everything that can be completed in this area has been done I finally go to free Sten.  He is a large character from a neighbouring country who had been imprisoned for murder (which he does not deny).  He agrees to come along and help us, but with little enthusiasm.  This is first time I have to decide who will come along with me and who will be left in the camp, because only me and three other characters can be in the party at once.

Sten in Prison.

In my previous play through I had not taken Sten with me, and I had assumed that this, or some other thing I had neglected to do, was the reason why Lothering subsequently appeared on the map as being inaccessible because it was overrun with the blight.  This feeling that I'd got something wrong early in the game had contributed to my being tired of playing it.  However, after I left Lothering this time the same thing happened and I cannot go back.

We ran into some Darkspawn on the way out of town and rescued a traveling merchant dwarf and his idiot son.  They will take residence in the camp soon and will sell us reasonably priced goods and the son has a talent for enchanting weapons with Runes which give them extra powers (more damage, greater chance to hit and even resistances etc.)

I then get my first view of the world map and choose to go to Redcliffe, where I must get the local lord, Arl Eamon, to join the fight against the Darkspawn.  I also have parts of side-quests which need to be taken care of there.

LittleBigPlanet and Burnout Legends on PSP and That Game on PC

I have been neglecting my blog writing duties lately.  I should have by written that LittleBigPlanet on the PSP failed to do the one thing that I asked of it and have plenty of content.  I think this is a great shame.  If I had played the PSP version first I would never have known that LBP was special and I never would have bothered to play the PS3 game.  Every game in a franchise advertises every other so every one should have the same time and attention put into it as every other.

I have now started Burnout Legends and it seems okay but I have not played much yet so don't feel I can really comment.  More later, hopefully.

As much as I was enthusing about only playing games in specific categories in my previous entry I have caved in and played on the PC before my two months of playing on handhelds had expired.  What was the game which caused me to weaken in this way?  What was the game which has kept me as it's slave since and not even allowed me to write this blog for over a fortnight?  It was the same game I previously forsook and swore never to play again, even after over 220 hours playing time had been clocked up on Steam.  Perhaps because of those 220 hours.

I had been playing a character who looked ridiculous and I hated him.  He was a mage and a useless one.  His physical makeup was pathetic, his ginger suede-head was ludicrous and the cowl he was adorned with was absolutely the finishing touch.

There were long periods in the game when I could not remember what my ultimate goal was.  I just seemed to do side-quest after side-quest and was so bogged down with so many incomplete quests in my codec that that my head spun as I trudged from room to room dreading to open the next door because there would always be an impossibly difficult fight behind it.  Could I not just open one of these doors and find some excellent loot and move on?  I think I have earned it.  No, you will find seventeen enemies any one of which will be able to beat any member of your four member party.

My ultimate goal was, of course, to unite the peoples of Ferelden and defeat the Darkspawn and the game was Dragon Age: Origins.

Going back to it now as a more experienced gamer I can see that it is excellent and did not deserve my hate.

The pieces of data that you find in books around the game world separate it from the herd.  They don't need to be there but they flesh out the culture and history of Ferelden and its neighbours so effectively in a few short paragraphs each.

This time I am a rogue.  "Rogue's have more fun," I said to myself.  I am a male human.  It almost felt like the radical thing to be.  While I'm not overjoyed with the way my character (pictured left) looks he is at least not totally crap.  He is not a constant reminder of my own stupidity.  I was going for safe, and I think that's what I managed.  Also, he's not an Elf!

I chose to be a noble and in this storyline you spend quite a bit of time messing about in your dads castle, and then it gets overrun and you have to get out.  That all happens pretty suddenly; but I suppose these things do.  It is decided by your father that you are going to go with Duncan, an experienced Grey Warden, who it seems you will meet whoever you are, and become a Grey Warden yourself and fight the Darkspawn.  I seem to remember that at this stage you go into the fade as part of your training if you are a mage but I could be remembering that wrongly.  I might go into the fade at a later stage.

For a human noble rogue the stage prior to initiation involves going into the Wilds (these wilds have a name beginning with K which I cannot remember, it's Kunari or something like that).  You are part of a group of four initiates.  Here I ran into a side-quest which I did not complete and seems to have been kicked into touch on the codec.  You are looking for an artefact which belongs to the Grey Wardens and you do find it and you also find Morrigen (also in the picture) and after a certain amount of messing about you take the artefact back to Duncan, leaving her behind.

It is known that the Darkspawn are soon to attack the area near your camp and you are to be initiated prior to this attack.  At the camp you also meet several other relevant people.  One is the King and another is Teyrn Loghain; a Teyrn being a type of noble.  You also meet an aging Mage called Wynne.

To cut a long story short, initiation involves drinking darkspawn blood.  This can kill you.  You do not die.  Neither does Alistair, who is one of the other initiates.  You also meet a Mubari warhound who takes to you so you take him along with you.  I called him Dogmungus.

In  the battle the King's forces are to take on the Darkspawn directly.  You and Alistair have to go to the top of a nearby tower to light a signal fire to let Teyrn Loghain's forces know that it is time to attack.  The tower is already overrun with darkspawn who you have to fight including a demon at the top.  You light the fire but Teyrn Loghain turns his army away, leaving the King (and Duncan) to their fate.  What a git!

God of War Chains of Olympus and LittleBigPlanet both on PSP

You will probably have to read the previous entry to make complete sense of these next three paragraphs.

Firstly I'd like to correct one or two things I said about Chains of Olympus.  When an enemy is about to attack you you do not have to press L and triangle simultaneously to reflect the attack back on to them, you just have to press L.  If you do it too early you will just fend off the attack but not damage the enemy and if you do it to late you get hit.

I was right in saying that you can do this a lot of times to the two large enemies I described last time to no noticeable effect but I did discover that a single heavy hit using triangle can usually be completed just after this defence and it will get through.  Occasionally when trying this I held down the button for too long and struck out with a longer attack and did not always get away with it without a retaliatory attack coming back.  Sometimes it appeared that even though Kratos got his shield up to block the retaliation he ended up being flattened to the floor and this would usually leave him open to two further attacks, one from the original attacker and one from the other enemy and this could be very frustrating as they did a lot of damage between them.

After quite a few more deaths I managed to kill both enemies using this method.  I had tried so many times that it was one of those moments when I could hardly believe that I would never have to do it again and that I was actually seeing the next section of the game.  A small part of me already felt nostalgic and mourned that frustrating arena and those enemies I had hated and killed but which had embedded themselves in my mind.

The PSPs LittleBigPlanet is very recognisable to anyone who has played LBP on the PS3.  Protagonist Sackboy runs and jumps his way through platform levels which have a variety of themes based on different parts of the world.  Along the way he gets fried, spiked , electrocuted steamed and frozen (I don't remember any freezing in LPB for PS3 but it is very similar to electrocution).

A blurry Sackboy in a blurry alpine setting.  Also pictured: some thin guy.

There is one difference, however, which makes the game a completely different experience to the PS3 version which is that, despite the terrible things that happen to Sackboy, he does not die.  He simply regenerates at the last checkpoint and you carry on.  Previously there was a limit to the number of times you could regenerate at a given point before you were finished and had to start the level again.  As much as this drove me up the wall when it happened its absence gives me a slightly casual attitude towards getting cooked and this is to my detriment as you lose points when it happens and my scores are generally mediocre as a result.

There are other differences in this game.  The stages, which are a bit shorter than the PS3 stages, are themed around different parts of the world from the first game.  The game has a 2 1/2 dimensional quality in the sense that Sackboy can move in and out of the screen between different layers to move around obstacles or avoid hazards.  There are only two layers in this version of the game whereas there are three in the home console version.  It is not immediately obvious how this difference effects gameplay, especially as I've not played on the PS3 for a while but having created a level on PS3 I can imagine that makes a substantial difference for the developers as well as for players.

I won't be creating any levels for the PSP as I only have an E1003 PSP Street which does not connect to the internet.  I'm a bit sorry about this as level creation is an interesting aspect of the game but when I did put my one PS3 level online it was rapidly relegated down to obscurity because so few people played it.  I cannot help thinking that this was not based on merit or lack of it but simply the fact that there are so many levels out there which have already clocked up loads of plays, and a few likes and this makes it hard to get a foothold.

Getting back to the PSP game.  It certainly is excellent but I cannot help thinking that death would improve it, and that longer levels wouldn't hurt, and could probably have been accommodated, though if there are plenty of levels I will let this go.

The positive thing I would say in conclusion is that I am anxious to stop writing this and play the game which I never really felt about Exit or Chains of Olympus but did feel about Civilization Revolution.  Maybe I should be giving the DS more of a chance.  Nevertheless, I have bid on a copy of Burnout Legends for PSP on ebay.

I have been having ideas for other restrictions I could place on my gaming for a limited period and come up with a few interesting ones.  The period I would implement the ideas for would depend on how restrictive they were:

1. Playing only games bought in charity shops and jumble sales
2. Playing only games bought on ebay for less than £5
3. Playing games from a single IP; GTA and Elder Scrolls come to mind but there might be other suitable ones.
4. Playing only games from a particular genre
5. Playing only games from a particular publisher
6. Playing only bonus content.

The first two would probably involve more PC and PS2 games than usual.  I am frustrated because I
had thought of another idea which was the one I was going to implement next but I've completely forgotten what it was.  I might do bonus content soon because I have got Harley Quinn's Revenge from Arkham City waiting to be played.