Basically, they were annoyed that there are certain disparages within the Gamerscore points system (some easy Achievements in easy games award the same amount of points as hard Achievements in hard games), so they award more Achievement points to Achievements that are harder to obtain than easy ones. The formula is simple: it’s based on how many people have an Achievement compared to how many people have played the game.
You can find out a whole manner of interesting facts about the games you have played and the Achievements you have earned. For example, my best Achievement in terms of ratio is the TCAF Pilot’s Commendation from Project Sylpheed, my highest ratio on a Live Arcade title is 2.634 (Lumines Live! – which is strange as I 200/200ed it the day it came out – why do people find Lumines so difficult? My years of mastery on the PSP version probably helped…), and the game I really should have more Achievements in is The Darkness, which I gave up as a bad job before I got too far in. Not only that, but they also offer in-line guides for certain Achievements and anyone can contribute a review for any Xbox 360 game, both of which users can easily publish themselves. You can also set yourself goals, display Achievements you are proud of in your Trophy Case, and quickly and easily advertise that you are wanting to boost multiplayer Achievements in specific games.
Usually I’ve written my Sunday entry by now – I like to make notes of any ideas I have, or any exciting events there may have been during the week, and most times I actually write it ahead of time when the inspiration strikes. This week however, the only thing of note that has happened is that interview I had, but I’ve already covered that in a post of it’s own… So… I’m struggling to think of things to write about.
Oh, I remember something now, the Live Arcade game this week was Game Room (essentially a collection of demos for rubbish old games), and it was free. That sounds good, right? Free game – free Achievements. Not really very many achievements, but some, 80 G’s added to your Gamerscore for free, nonetheless. To get anywhere near the full 1000 you need to pay for the individual games, and considering they are mostly priced the same as proper Live Arcade titles, it’s a bit of a money-spinning exercise by Microsoft there. Did I mention the games are all awful? Well, one or two could be construed as “classic”, but they’re mostly dog-shit.
Something else I could mention is that I’ve been re-reading the Harry Potter books this month, I finished Deathly Hallows the other night and I’m slowly writing up my thoughts on them. Expect those posts early April.
So, you know that post I made yesterday about having a job interview (it’s just below this one, scroll down a little)? Well I got a couple of comments on it from some spambots (pretending to be natural and not come across as spambots). Here, read the first one:
I really can’t understand some points of this post, but I guess I just need to learn a bit more about this, because it definitely sounds interesting and kind of though-provoking! By the way, how did you first get involved with this?
Well.
He cannot understand some points of this 26 word post. The general point, that I had an interview, was even reflected in the title. Clearly he needs to learn more about interviews. Oh yes, he suggests that next. Reputable companies do sound interesting, don’t they? And I guess keeping your fingers crossed is kind of thought-provoking. And after all that, as an aside, a parting comment, he asks how did I first get involved in wanting a job. I would’ve thought that was obvious.
The second one, on the same 26 word post:
Hey this is a great story. I’m going to email this to my friends. I stumbled on this while googling for some music lyrics, I’ll be sure to come back. thanks for sharing.
I’m sure his friends will be enthralled by my “great story”. What lyrics must he have been googling for to find a post about someone having a job interview?
Instead of a cat or some Engrish, this week I am bringing this site to your attention – Hacked IRL. Sure, it’s from the same people who do cheezburger but it’s a different style of humour. Check it out.
We just get the one life, you know. Just one. You can’t live someone else’s or think it’s more important just because it’s more dramatic. What happens matters. Maybe only to us, but it matters.
50 points to anyone who can tell me what film that quote is from. I used to always want to write an autobiography, but the main snags were always the fact that no-one would buy it, and no-one would care. As far as lives go, yeah, it’s been pretty mundane; not a patch on lives containing real hardship, or half as exciting as some extravagant celebrity life, but there have been a few highlights, a few interesting situations, several struggles, but most importantly it’s been my life (that last fact goes a long way to explaining why I have such a vested interest in it, and why others wouldn’t). Why don’t I want to write it anymore though? Well, I am telling the story right now, albeit in a disjointed, non-chronological fashion, via this blog. I was reading through some old entries earlier in the week, and it’s incredible the amount of information you could gather from them.
An image of a fox, which is ironic as I cannot seem to capture any of my own
I keep seeing foxes when I go out for a cigarette at night. I’ve been trying to get a picture of them but the damn things must know when I am bringing my camera out with me as they never appear. And on the times when I don’t bring my camera out with me, they hang around for ages – a fair distance away, granted – sometimes even two or three of them, darting through the front gardens of the houses opposite. The other night they made a right racket, knocking over the bins a few doors down then scrabbling over fences to get away from all the attention they unwittingly garnered.
I find myself really looking forward to Summer this year. Thing is, I never look forward to Summer as I find it to generally be too hot and I can’t really deal with all the sun and the heat. So why am I really looking forward to Summer this year? It may be because I seem to be feeling the cold more than usual this winter, or my body may be yearning for some vitamin D. Anyway, this is not a rhetorical question. If you have an inkling as to why I might possibly be looking forward to summer, then please: answers on a postcard. Or, in a comment. The second option would be far quicker.
Click this, it's amazing - It still has the price sticker on it from WHSmiths or somewhere like that
Yes I did.
I can’t remember the specifics of it, but I’m sure it had something to do with falling into a pit trap when you only have 1 HP remaining. This would cause the game to be confused (like maybe you can only be killed by a monster, not a pit trap), and it’d give you a glitched graphic (which stood for infinite, or maybe negative HP) instead of a number to denote how much HP you had left. It’s a shame I was never able to save my infinite HP character – I never fully grasped how exactly you saved stuff on the Spectrum, it was always unreadable when it came to loading the saved stuff up – I don’t think I ever got much further than half-way through the game. I sent the cheat in to a load of gaming magazines at the time (like Sinclair User… man that was an awesome magazine – loved the Jerry Paris’ cover art era), but it never got printed.
I also loved the board game version and my brother and I used to love nothing more than going on an adventure. I was always the Elf, he was the Barbarian, we used to play the Dungeon Master ourselves by moving the enemies to whoever was nearest. Playing as the DM also meant that we avoided pit traps and knew where all the secret doors were, but hey, it was good fun. We also kept track of how much Gold we found and by the end we had all the weapons (so we could attack at range and diagonally, stuff like that) and armours (so we had extra dice to throw on defending (although we did used to re-roll the dice frequently, just in case!)) – taking this into account, although the board game version didn’t have an infinite HP glitch, we never seemed to fail a Quest…
Bayonetta fan art from Deviantart. Click for the artist's gallery
Format: Xbox 360 Developer: Platinum Games Publisher: Sega Release: January 2010
Now, I don’t know if you know this (err…), but I’m a bit of a Devil May Cry fan. I bought a PS2 solely for the original Devil May Cry, I put myself through the torture that was through Devil May Cry 2, I loved Devil May Cry 3 to absolute bits, and I put up with Nero as much as I had to in Devil May Cry 4. “But this isn’t Devil May Cry 5!” I hear you say. No it’s not, you’re right – it’s not even a spin-off of the Devil May Cry series. But it was created by some of the same minds behind the original DMC game, and if this isn’t a continuation of their devotion to the “Stylish Action” genre (of which, the Devil May Cry series was probably the only denizen, God Hand a next-door neighbour) then I’m a giant lava spider.
As far as the storyline itself goes, it’s standard fare. Deranged bad-guy wants to kick-start a new reality and (as we all know) you can only do that by wiping the existing one. You, as Bayonetta, have to stop him. There were some neat little diversions from this story-telling norm, such as Cereza, who was (I think) actually a younger version of Bayonetta herself who had been brought to the present from the past – I made the mistake of skipping most cut-scenes after a few seconds the first time around as I found them to be far too long-winded – But as the story became more interesting towards the end I stuck with them, even going right back and replaying earlier levels to see scenes that I’d missed, so I may have picked up some things out of the proper order. One strange thing: I find myself holding the right trigger and tapping the back whenever I’m confronted by a cut-scene in every game now.
All the weapons are stunning pieces of design in their own right
While all the characters are very well fleshed out, Bayonetta herself steals the show – her vibrant personality shines through her total amnesia. She has a line for every situation, a quip for every occasion, a scathing put-down for every cherub faced enemy, a little wink for the camera every time she lands a certain attack and ends up on her back, legs akimbo. It is little wonder she feels like “a fucking celebrity in this town” – I wouldn’t be surprised if the real reason everyone knows of her is that they can see her ego for miles around. It’s almost as if the game is an attention whore as well, always throwing more enemies, more set-pieces and more huge bosses at you. It doesn’t want you to look away from the screen for a second: Between chapters you are offered a simple shooting game in which a sharp eye is rewarded with extra health or booster items for the next level, and where other games would show you a “Now loading…” screen, Bayonetta decides to keep this behind the scenes and you are invited to hone your skills in the practise mode.
Weapons, weapons, weapons. Bayonetta may have tonnes of them to choose from, but it’s the methods used in their selection and their unique traits that really made the combat interesting for me. You can have two sets of weapons to choose from at any point – each made up of a weapon or pair of weapons in your hands and a pair of weapons on your feet – one button press instantly switches between them, even mid-combo. The two button control scheme is deceptively simple, with one button controlling the use of the weapons in your hands and the other governing the weapons bound to your ankles – but the sheer amount of combos that you can produce just by combining these two buttons is very impressive.
Bayonetta and Gomorrah
In addition to this, holding one of the two attack buttons instead of releasing it (at the start of a combo, at the end, during, it doesn’t matter) elongates the attack with the weapons unique trait. For firearms this generally means they shoot. They shoot a lot. Pistols fire rapid bursts of bullets and shotguns fire with less delay between shots. Melee weapons are more diverse in their effects. The whip, Kulshedra, reaches out and snags enemies, dragging them closer for more punishment. Durga – a pair of claws that you can switch between fire and electric elements – can be devastating, quickly charging up then discharging a mass of shocking energy or slowly generating a fiery skull which explodes.
This combination of hot-switching and weapon diversity leads to some crazy stunts, such as starting a fast punchy combo with electric Durga in your hands, sending an enemy flying into the distance, then holding the feet attack button with some Durga claws set to fire, building up a scorching skull, switch to Kulshedra and drag them back to you just as the fiery skull explodes, but you quickly catch them in place by freezing them with Odette, then finish them off by summoning a massive demonic leg to kick them to pieces. Massive damage. In some respects, this approach has impressed me more than Devil May Cry’s combat mechanic. My mind boggles at the amount of thought and planning that went into making sure all the weapons complement, yet contrast with each other, and I would probably go so far as to say that although the combat in Bayonetta is a hell of a lot more over the top, it is possibly more appealing for newcomers to the genre than Devil May Cry’s, as it is more approachable and simple to grasp.
Odette was probably my favourite weapon. Despite them having no use at long range, the increased moving speed and ability to turn enemies into huge blocks of ice more than made up for their lack of distance. It seems so obvious now that the weapon I’d been waiting for my whole life was a pair of ice-skates. I also really enjoyed using Sai Fung (think shotguns attached by a small chain – gun-chucks, if you will), but feel they were unlocked far too late into the game. To be honest I never touched some of the weapons, except initially to see what they looked like and what effect they had on combat. There were too many pointless variations, for example I never once seriously considered using the normal, non-magic handguns or the Bazillions and Pillow Talk seemed a weaker Shuraba variant, albeit with prettier visuals.
As if that’s not enough, Bayonetta has more subtle tricks up her sleeve. She usually finishes her combos with giant fists or feet summoned from Inferno and given form by her hair: they strike her enemies a powerful blow. Witch Time, activated when you dodge an attack at the very last instant, slows your enemies and hopefully lets you finish them off quicker while they can’t fight back so much. While I did at first use the Devil May Cry method of holding the lock-on bumper and tapping jump to dodge, I soon dropped that habit and used the button that Platinum Games had so thoughtfully dedicated to dodging – I thought it would be too easy to use this exclusively, but it actually feels more natural having swift access to activating Witch Time. The difficulty comes in timing it so you dodge enemy attacks at the last moment, not the button combination.
I love killing these guys
Torture Attacks kill most enemies in one go: Once you have generated enough Magic through stylish combat, timely dodging and maybe using the odd taunt here and there, you are given the option to call upon some arcane machinery which you can use to decapitate enemies (after slapping their arse first, of course), grind them into the ground with huge, spiked wheels or in the case of bosses, summon demonic creatures from Inferno, such as the dragon-like Gomorrah, the huge spider Phantasmaraneae or, as Alisdair from the forum described, the Climax Chicken.
All this would be for nought if the enemies you unleashed this power upon were forgettable though. Far from it, the opposition are beautifully designed, putting me in mind of the Renaissance, particularly Michaelangelo. Most “Servants of Heaven” have the look of the elegant and muscular statues we all recognise, but with modern twists. For example, Fortitudo has a large cherubim face set upside down on it’s body and two large serpent-like creatures it uses as arms – not something you’d likely see in a gallery of 16th century masterworks – but the influence is there. Not only that, but levels themselves are a masterclass. Constantly shifting your perceptions, one minute you running up walls and ceilings (all the while fighting enemies), the next you are navigating angelic walkways that wind around familiar paths, keeping things fresh. The music was suitably epic for the most part, but if I’m honest, by the end of the game I found that two of the musical tracks – the main Bayonetta theme (Mysterious Destiny) and Fly Me To The Moon (∞ Climax Mix) – really annoyed me.
Still the best
Bayonetta could possibly be described as a collection of memorable moments. The ethereal butterfly wings that sprout when she double-jumps. The way that taunted, enraged enemies are indicated by fiery red halos. Using her middle finger to kick-start a motorcycle. The first time she morphs into a panther for faster movement. The gasoline fizzling out at the end of the Temperatia confrontation. That poor cherub statue’s penis. Finishing off Baldur with a lipstick headshot. Throwing the final boss into the heart of the sun. There are a fair amount of subtle nods to other games in there too, my favourites being Viewtiful Joe (Red-Hot Shot), Resident Evil (Whad’r'ya buyin’?) and Devil May Cry (Let’s rock, baby!). Some are not so subtle – In the levels based on Space Harrier and Outrun you are able to choose what soundtrack to listen to whilst playing. Do you choose the original versions or the Bayonetta remixed versions? As an aside, the hardest difficulty setting has the best title of all time: Non-Stop ∞ Climax Mode.
So, to conclude, yes, I did enjoy the game (immensely), but Devil May Cry 3 is still sitting pretty at the top of my Stylish Action chart simply because I found the combat more challenging, and as a result of this, more rewarding. It was a pleasure to once again play a Sega game that felt like a proper Sega game should, full of non-stop action and over the top shenanigans and it was, without a doubt, one hell of a roller-coaster. But I dare say it was just a bit too much. [9]
Well, that was my first review in about 5 years. I hope you like the new style, I think I may have compared it to Devil May Cry a bit too much…
I wasn’t feeling too great yesterday, I was all bunged up, feeling like something was trying to slowly burst out of my head. But, because she’s generally the greatest person in the world, Jane was totally lovely yesterday, she made me corned beef and tomato sandwiches for lunch. Took me right back to my Nan’s house – corned beef and tomato were a staple part of our diet when we were kids, beautiful. The taste brought loads of lovely memories back (see, my childhood wasn’t all bad…). I’m not feeling too bad today, I truly underestimated the medicinal properties of the Tequila Sunrise.
In other new, my speech for David’s wedding is coming on nicely, still not sure if there are too many jokes in there, but hey, this could be the beginning of my career in stand up comedy.
There’s good and bad points about not living in Southampton anymore. The good is that I’m not haunted by bad memories just by walking down the streets. I know I go on about this a lot, but not accidentally bumping into those people who made my life miserable is great. And when I do eventually get a job, I won’t cringe every time one of those people walks into my workplace and be forced to put on a happy face for them. The bad is obvious – not seeing my Mum every day, and not being able to watch Jasmine grow up. Every time I go to visit she seems as though she’s grown a lot, has developed tonnes of new abilities and it seems to me that she is generally growing up in spurts. I don’t know what prompted me to write that, I just felt I had to.
Wow, look at that, not one bad word about the people I live with. A genuine first for my Sunday round-up?
Well, there is my brother’s blanket in all it’s glory, being modelled so nicely by my brother himself, but what on Earth does it have to do with this Massive Attack track Unfinished Sympathy?
Went over to Southampton to see the guys yesterday, it was lovely. Jasmine is crawling now – slowly – but she’s getting there. Her teeth are starting to come through and she looks so much like my Mum. I’m glad she was in a better mood than last time I went over, she was all smiles and laughs – last time she was very irritable because her teeth were bothering her – she’s obviously getting used to it now. David and I had lovely chats, I found out some more details about their wedding and we talked about how awesome the stag night was going to be (he’s adamant that we end up at a strip-club you know), and it was just generally a nice day. I was praying I didn’t come home to any bombshells like last time, and thankfully everything was fine when I did get back.
In fact, it was almost the total opposite of what happened last time I came back from Southampton, as Jane’s Mum, Jane’s Dad, Jane and I went out for a meal. The Rusty Cutter, a Beefeater. The wait for a table was long (I wasn’t particularly bothered about this, I was just enjoying spending some time with Jane away from the boys), but food was absolutely delightful. Jane and I shared a starter platter, it had a bit of everything on it, from little racks of ribs to garlic bread, then for my main course I decided to forgo the usual Mixed Grill and go for something a bit different. I usually shy away from chicken in restaurants as it’s such a common meat, I have chicken all the time, so I almost always go for a nice, fat, rare steak when we go out. This time was different, as we’d been there before and the steaks were not really so good. I chose the Giant Chicken Skewer, and it was an inspired decision.
Three chunks of chicken breast, one chunk of thigh, all skewered on a wooden stake, all juicy and (surprisingly for chicken) flavoursome. The chips were chips – you can’t really go wrong with them to be honest – and Beefeater Grill coleslaw was very nice, it was some of the best coleslaw I’ve ever tasted. I went with the side salad and Jalapeño sauce options, but for some reason I also ended up with a “Spiral Onion Loaf” on my plate, which resembled, and tasted like, an onion bhaji. Delicious, it was. All of it.
