Let’s recap what’s happened so far…

As you can see, I accidentally created a box…

Well, blogging, too easy to push aside. This really has evolved into just a place for me to log my gaming history now anyway, not much of that has been achieved over Christmas anyway. Basically…

Found an N64, £15.

Found a Dreamcast, £10. A keyboard for £5, hopefully it works it looks hardly used and the memory manager registers it even if only as a gamepad. I’ll have to find games for this now. A must is Typing of the Dead. Also need a VMU.

Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, £24.

Geist, £4.99

Casino Royale Quantum of Solace is almost finished, multiplayer has taken over getting single player completed.

Old vs New

I’m still on the lookout for a N64 but as soon as I get one I’ll be comparing two games made eleven years apart. The legendary GoldenEye 007 (so I’m told, I’ve never played it) and debatable Quantum of Solace, which I picked up half price at gamestation the other day, the only reason for buying it.

I’m going to do this purely for comparison, especially on length and story. Modern games I find are too thin on story and don’t last very long, often bumped up with repetitive collecting missions or side missions. In thinking about older gaming I always remember I found it took me many hours longer to complete games compared to modern games and stories I think had more thought in them. The best way for me to confirm or perhaps disprove it is to do this. Playing neither of the games before eliminates any bias. I’m not going to post a running commentary like TR:U, I’ll draft it all up and post at once.

So far on Quantum I have spent about 40 minutes getting used to the game and completing the first level. I’ve also spent a few hours on multiplayer, which in my opinion is more likeable and less annoying than COD’s which of course Quantum took the engine from, I haven’t quite figured out why I like this better. I think it’s because it feels calmer than COD, people use the new cover system as opposed to running around like a mad wo/men gunning anything and everything. I’m sure some more time on it will help me decide.

More…

The shop I got Goldeneye from has decided to have a closing down sale with a buy one get one free offer on everything. I went back to get what I didn’t get, Mario64, WWF Attitude and possibly Vigilante8 which I may have confused for Extreme-G. I got none of them, amazingly all gone, I didn’t think there was such a rush for N64 stuff, but oh well at least I snagged Goldeneye. All of these were a quid each so I had to get four to take advantage of the offer, so theres an odd one out. Total £2.

Double-oh

I’ve heard nothing but praise for this and for a quid it’s difficult to pass by.

Now time to look for a console to play it on.

Tomb Raider: Underworld

I started this weeks back as a review/overall closing on TR:U, I can’t be bothered to write anything detailed anymore so I’ll post what I had done.

“So, 1000/1000 thanks to a forum thread advising to load an old save and do the dives on that as they are all close together, just a 20 minute job. According to mygamercard.net that puts me 19th in the UK to 1000 and 59th in the world to get to 1000. At the time of writing only 14762 people are on that leaderboard, a suprisingly small amount of people compared to other games, I think most of the market share on this one was to the PS3.”

Yeah not much but to close I’ll do a quick overview. I would have played it again but I couldn’t be bothered, the game in the end was a disappointment really. Adding the blog entires up it suprisingly comes to about 17 hours 45 mins (to round it off) of play. It didn’t seem anywhere near as long as that. I think the treasure hunting part did bump that time up a lot, if I played the core story I reckon it would have took half the time. It’s a sad fact a lot of games in this generation rely on silly repetitive side missions to squeeze extra hours out of the game. The majority of games I have played this year have all seemingly followed the same pattern, short and thin story with a lot of side and/or collecting missions to pad out the game.

The Collector’s Edition is nothing special, I haven’t bothered to watch the DVD, it doesn’t look very long at a glance, probably good so I don’t get bored if I do watch it one day. What I find really disappointing is that the soundtrack is on the DVD and not separately like Anniversary, sad, but I like the music, it’s ok to stick on PC. It’s nice to have, it wasn’t much extra in cost. That’s another trend games have these days, throw in a Limited Edition usually filled with rubbish, but hey they might actually be limited and collectable in the future.

The next big release I will get will be RE5 out on the 13/03/09, a friday Until then I’m going to step back, attempt to finish some of my backlog which I must get around to collating and enjoy some last gen games on the Gamecube I just got. If they do suck then it’s not as bad as blowing £40 on a single game.

Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld

Treasure Fail

I’m not very good at this game, I think I have a lot to learn, Whilst CEX have a good stock, the prices aren’t so. Today I picked up nine games, six ok, probably overpriced:

Resident Evil Code: Veronica X – £10
Resident Evil Remake – £6
The Legend of Zelda: Collector’s Edition – £15
F-Zero GX – £8
Super Mario Sunshine – £8
Metroid Prime 2 Echos – £10

Three Fails:

Metroid Prime: – £5 (No manual)
Pikmin – £10 (No manual)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker – £14 (I only noticed when I got home that it was marked up as (With Bonus Disc), but I only have the standard one which was marked as £12, bah)

Oh well, nevermind I guess. £86 total, which is only a little more than two new releases.

Why I hate Game…

Twats

4th post down annoys me more…

Tomb Raider: Underworld… Almost the end

Hurray. Got the missing treasures at last, about 3 hours of play a lot of it unnecessary. I was looking in the wrong places in those caves on the first level. Thankfully people have enough patience to make guides. Oh and I got a swan dive achievement in Treasure Hunt (in the last posting I musta went to the wrong place) but I can’t get all three as there’s no way back to Amanda’s boat in this mode. Damn. New game here I come.

Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld

Tomb Raider: Underworld Level 7

This level took about 2 hours 45 mins, about half an hour easy must have been spent on collecting that stupid relic, eventually got it along with all 30 treasures, I used a guide to keep me on track to help when I was a few short going into certain sections.

The level wasn’t the best end of a game I’ve seen. Swim, slaughter some enemies and get slightly aggravated during the final puzzle when the tables turn a bit. Overall the story was thin.

Missing just 4 achievements. All the dives ones as I didn’t realise these had to be in one “adventure” aka a save of a run of the story, treasure hunt doesn’t allow you to get them. And of course the Masture Treasure Collector one, all 179 of them. Not sure if I’ll go back and get them, seems like too much hassle. The extras were unlocked too, for some reason on the 360 the game doesn’t actually load when you select the storage device on the main menu so nothing appears but they are unlocked when playing a level.

I’ll provide a full review of the game as a whole sometime shortly.

Oh and treasure hunt has no enemies? Try telling that to the panther that just jumped out on me in Southern Mexico.

Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld

Tomb Raider: Underworld Level 6

Almost the last of these postings, thankfully. Well this was a cheap level, a recycled “map”. I was expecting more but it never arrived, a bit of a joke really. Nothing to collect and only about 3-5 minutes of play time. Disappointing.

Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld