Meanderings of a Monkey Juggler

Uncle D has an X360 now to go with his slightly swanky new telly.  I was up there visiting him last night and got to play with his new toy. 

What to think?

Well first off it's really bloody noisy.  Apparently he's even got the newer less noisy model but it's still pretty bad.  But what about the games?

He started off showing me Kameo.  It's quite pretty and seems like a good adventure/puzzle wotsit.  Pretty much a one-player affair.  Next was Tomb Raider (the latest one).  It reminded me loads of the new Prince of Persia games but D suggested that it's probably the other way round.  He's probably right on that one.

These were the 2 "proper" X360 games I saw.  He had Ghost Recon too but this didn't float my boat at all.  Not the sort of thing I want to play.

After those we had a look at some he'd downloaded off XBox Live.  Some were ok.  One didn't work saying that he needed to set his output to something other than PAL50.  He wasn't on PAL50 and any tweaking of control settings (as prompted) didn't improve things at all.  But then he showed me "Geometry Wars".  I've heard that this is good and I am pleased to say the reviews aren't wrong.

Remember "Asteroids"?  Well it's like that on major steroids and stimulants.  It takes place in 2D on a space background.  Enemies are coloured shapes that move according to their programming.  Purple squares dash straight for you, green shapes seem to travel in random shapes etc....  Your ship moves with the left joystick and you shoot with the right stick (not a button).  This means you can fly up the screen whilst shooting across or down it for example.  It's very colourful and pretty and very smooth.  Oh and insanely hard. I got about 60000 and that was hard.  I've just had a look on't web and there are videos of people getting a good few million points.  Eek.

This is the sort of gaming I remember from years ago (only prettier).  Easy to get into and pure skill to get good at.  If you think of my all-time fave game (Super Monkey Ball) it's pretty much the same deal - dead easy game mechanics and just skill to get good at.

It seems an awful lot of money to play this game though.  I doubt I'll get me a 360 as this seems to be the only game I'd want to play at the mo. on it.

Now then let's talk graphics.  The whole point of the new 360 and the PS3 (as far as games go) is to swank up the level of graphics.  They've pumped millions and more into trying to get photorealistic piccies on their games.  And it hasn't worked.  They're nice graphics but they're still miles off what they want them to be.  Human figures just don't look right, they don't move correctly and Tomb Raider was noticeably stuttery too.  So what's the point?

On another note I've finished the major part of Pikmin 2 now.  You have to reach a certain target and I've now done so.  I thought that would be end of game. Problem is one of your 2 men gets left on the Pikmin planet so you have to go back and get more cash and try and find him.  So more (and harder) bits to do.  And I thought I was done with it.  Sigh.

Have fun.

I've had this game for a while now but never really sat down to play it much.  Well I had a go over the last couple of evenings and here are some observations:

1. It's extremely good although the camera is nowhere near as good as Wind-Waker's.
2. Pretty? Wow.
3. It's so hard!  I'm playing it on "Easy" and I still got killed 4 times by the bloody Indiana Jones-style boulder rolling down the hill bit.
4. It's actually scary.  The music is excellent and unsettling, the baddies are worrying.  And I've been injected with something nasty but I don't know what and that particular chicken hasn't roosted yet.

I'm looking forward to the rest of it.

Have fun.

I was at PB's yesterday evening.  We finally watched "The Devil's Rejects".  Good for gratuitous skin shots and wanton cruelty if that's your bag.

Anyway to the meat of today's crux.

We (me, C and Rod) sat up and watched whatever came ont 'elly.  First off that meant observing the freak show that is this year's Big Bro.  They really have picked the single most unbalanced group of loons outside of an asylum.  One or two look vaguely normal but the others swamp them rather.

After this feast of Roman depravity came the late night phone in games.  Some bird called Alex who was far too chirpy for the lateness of the hour was asking for people to phone in and tell her what the total number of pounds on the screen was.  We started watching through idleness really and got hooked.  What to be amazed at?  Firstly was the sheer front of the girl as she blathered non-stop for 2 hours with people failing to get the right answer.  Then she'd whap the prize up and up to encourage more callers.  But the game was a strange one.  A red square had a picture of some cash on it and that was it.  There were 2 50's, 2 20's, a 10 and 2 5's.  Hence the title of this post.  But that wasn't the answer despite every tenth caller saying the same thing.  So what was going on?  Do we have to add up all the numbers that we see in the red square?  What about all the pounds in the whole screen including around the red square?  Ooh it was difficult.  At 3am another bird took over to continue the game.  This just kept going!

I went home and decided I wanted to know what the answer was so I taped the damn thing.  This morning I watched it (in preview fast forward) and found out that the answer was 413.  I can't for the life of me see how they got that one though.  Still there must have been a system 'cos the guy who won was very emphatic.  Not to worry.

Have fun.

An awfully long time away from the site.  Why?  Stuck in Bulgaria away from net access; that's why.

A generally stressful trip about sorting out our house and then looking after my folks on their first trip there.

People

• Nikolai and Zoya : lovely people who picked us up at the airport despite it being 1.30am.  Best news of the trip too; she's well up the duff.
• Police : Mental levels of road blocks stopping all and sundry from driving between towns.
• Tzetzko and Katya : Still lovely and he's looking more hippy like than ever.
• Maiko : I knew she occasionally got a bit stressed but the way she nearly burst a corpuscle just because my folks were coming was not nice to see.
• K : Nearly went as mental as her mum.  Worryingly poor at communicating at all through most of the trip.  Really don't know why. 
• Denchu and Ivanka : The previous owners of our house.  We really did manage to give her 2 days of extreme hypertension and him a mini-stroke.  The dark side is strong in this one!
• My parents : Seemed to enjoy their holiday.  I think they were surprised by some of it; non-plussed by others and fed-up with all the waiting around we had to do.  Turns out my dad doesn't eat cucumber - a mild inconvenience it's true as the staple diet of the bulgs is cucumber.
• Totevi : useless tosspots the lot of 'em.

Weather

• The weather was astonishing.  Mainly extremely hot (well into the 30's), 2 days of ridiculous rain; one session of huge hailstones and lightning above the Tsaravets light show.  K got burned!

House

• What a mess!  Needs an awful lot of work.  Needs furniture.  Needs the previous lot to actually shift their crap.
• Previous lot were nice and "whitewashed the walls for you" and managed to get it on everything else that really didn't need whitewashing.  Messy!
• K spent the trip trying to get someone to help out or do the whole thing for us.  Managed to get one person's number but he then managed to avoid answering his phone; then didn't respond to messages and then switched his phone off.  So how exactly are we going to get this house ready for guests in August?

Animals

• Dogs are happy and I like them a lot.  Aaahh.
• Cats are cats.  Still trying to sneak in the house and one went mental when trapped in the house with me and realised he was in awful trouble.
• Snake, snake ooohhhhh a snake!  I saw my first real life wild snake. And not just a dinky one neither.  This fellow was about a metre long.  It was also not out in the wilds but in K's mum's garden.

Places

• Dryanovo is still lovely.
• Tsaravets is still impressive.
• Tarnovo is still a nice place to visit.
• Hotel Yantra had a Jeckyll and Hyde persona.  We went in the first week and had a lovely time with ace food and a stunning view.  The next week we went with my parents and we had a good view of the citadel but as the night wore on (and it was hot) they opened the bloody windows.  Cue vast swarms of flies, midges and mozzies around us and in the food and our hair.  My mother has never been so emphatic in her life when she said "Never bring me here again!"

Food

• Lots of restaurants. An oddity noticed before but really obvious on this trip is that all the restaurants are exactly the same.  Well not exactly but their menus are.  Imagine every restaurant and caff in the UK doing the same menu.  How would you choose which is the one for you?  I don't know.
• We did try a different place that was officially a chinese restaurant but they didn't really want to serve us.
• Still no Indian places.  Boo.
• Still no western crap fast food - yay!

Travel

• Chavs on the plane.  Travel is clearly too cheap at the moment.
• K driving, yes driving.  An experience to be sure but not one I'll impose on possible future guests quite yet.  Did manage to hit the gates of the drive when trying to reverse out.
• Lots of driving done in ancient Lada and hired car (a well knackered Vectra - but still plenty better than the Lada).
• Lada died on main road.  Cue lots of K blaming me for "not knowing how the car works". I blamed a knackered 27 year old Lada that hadn't been driven for 2 years.  After rescuing the car the mechanic said that the fuel pump had died.  After replacement it worked fine.  I thank you!  Perhaps a dead fuel pump is a symptom of not "knowing how the car works".  But probably not.

Oddments

• One day I was woken up by an all mighty rumpus outside.  Opened the window to see a startled cow running up and down the drive.  K's mum eventually got a chain round its neck but this only led to the spectacle of Maiko "water skiing" behind a cow.
• Had an eye test and turns out that my eyesight is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago.  New pair of glasses ordered that will be quite nice for driving with.  (How middle aged do I sound?)
• Party for 6 that ended up with 11 guests.  Cue more frantic doings by Maiko and K going mental over preps.  My folks did get to hear Tzetzko and Sashu doing their music thang though.  That was fun.

Oh there was probably more but that'll do.

Have fun.

Pwned! Oh that was enjoyable.

Have fun.

Welcome to the mental world of the Japanese.  If you've read this for a while you'll know I of a GameCube and that there has been some interest in Nintendo's next console codenamed "Revolution".  I think this is a good name that describes what they're trying to do in changing how games are played rather than just shinying up the pictures.

So lots of interest has been garnered and secrets have been kept about exactly what the machine will be able to do.

Hard-core gamers have been turned off by the stated lack of HD graphics.  Some were turned off by the weirdness of the controller (its selling point if you ask me).  And now Nintendo have just wrecked any chance of salvaging their reputation at all.  They've just released the name of their new machine.  But it's the "Revolution".  Sadly no.  They've decided to call it; I can't bring myself to mention this now.  They've decided to call it the Nintendo "Wii" (pron Whee).

I thought it was a joke at first but it appears not.  It was Nintendo of America that announced this.  I wonder if any UK employees have told them that selling a machine that has a name which is a synonym of "urine" is not likely to go down well in the UK.  There are various comments by Nint re why they've chosen this but they really don't wash with me.

Can you imagine.  If I'd said to my mother "Can I play with my Wii now?" she'd have cuffed me round the head and fairly so.

Honestly! 

I'll probably be one of the ones that does actually buy one though.  Can't imagine the crush in the shop for this baby.  And I'll still call it the Revo.  Otherwise I'll have to walk into a shop and ask "Can I have a Wii please?" and they'll fall about laughing.

Have fun.

D has put his "top 20 games" list up on his site and this rather neatly was finished on the same day as I finally finished Paper Mario: 1000 Year Door.  I don't finish too many games so I've had a think to see which ones have been completed.

In rough date order:

ZX Spectrum

Probably loads but I remember getting through

• Bruce Lee
• Beachhead
• Jet Pac
• Spindizzy (my proudest Speccy moment)
• and I got to "Deadly" on Elite

Amiga

• Tower of Babel
• Stunt Car Racer
• Spindizzy Worlds
• (not me but a friend at the time managed to finish the original Lemmings with no cheating)

PC

• MDK 2 (terribly under rated)
• Diablo 2

GBA

• Scrabble - (Beat level 10 at all three versions of the game.  And I beat Conundrum on level 1 in German, ner)

Gamecube

• Ace Golf (well it's a bit open ended but I opened up all the tournaments and won 'em all)
• Legend of Zelda - The Wind Waker
• Paper Mario - 1000 Year Door
• Super Monkey Ball 2 - Story mode (can't finish challenge mode yet)
• Pikmin [added 4/5/06]

That's pretty poor considering how many games I've actually played in my life.  Does it mean I'm crap at playing or just that I don't care enough to really go at these things?  No idea.

Have fun.

I've just looked at the release schedule for the N.RSI.  I'm going to be rather swamped at the end of March I think.  On one day (the 31st) they are releasing Animal Crossing Wild World, Trauma Centre and, best of all, Super Monkey Ball RSI.  I may not surface much in April; sorry in advance.

Have fun.

I just wish to say that Pikmin really is one of the finest games in existence.

Have fun.

I had a dream last night.  It was an exciting dream where I was doing a sudoku.  Yup that exciting.  Anyway it went wrong and I was scouring the puzzle to see just where I went wrong.  Eventually I spotted that the top right 3x3 had not one but 7 sixes in it!  How cack was I?

Another dream the night before had me woken up by K 'cos she was concerned I was having a scary dream.  I LIKE scary dreams.  Humph!

Have fun.