Perfect Dark

After months of shivering, weeping, wailing, flailing and generally debasing myself in anticipation of playing Perfect Dark, today saw it silently creep onto the marketplace. So after a frustrating wander round town trying to find somewhere I could pick up some Microsoft Points I finally got to settle down with it after so many years away. The first thing you notice is that everything feels the same, the music, the graphics, the sound effects. It's pretty much unchanged, which is for the better really in terms of fan service. Those expecting Modern Warfare graphics though are probably best off sticking to the upcoming Stimulus Package (5 maps, 3 new, 2 old for 1200MSP! What value!). It does feel dated in some places, it's worth pointing out. The controls feel imprecise, especially whilst aiming. When you hold down the L trigger it feels like you're dragging a corpse along the screen when scrolling sideways. Voice acting is not the best, but hey, no-one really cared about that then. One amusing point was when a scientist sarcastically claimed he would "help me out" but "accidents may happen" but then didn't press the alarm as I'd done the objective in the wrong order. Oh hilarity. One new addition would be the Xbox Live multiplayer. This again was a miss for me. Almost quite literally. A ten minute match on Felicity turned into a slapping match in the bunker area. Frustrating at best, plain ridiculously shit more accurately. However, it just works. The game is massive and (quite rarely for this gen) has a hell load of multiplayer options for split-screen and online. For 800 points you could do a whole lot worse but if you loved the original anywhere near as much as I did you need to pick this up right now.

As I only could buy 2100 points I had a few pennies left over. I say had to, I chose to. So after an hour of debating whether I buy Peggle again I went for Fifa Ultimate Team and the Big Surf Island add-on for Burnout Paradise. I've only played the former so far as I decided to come downstairs and watch Barcelona destroy Stuttgart. I mean destroy as well, Man Utd and Arsenal are probably worried. Rightly so. Anyway, Ultimate Team is like Manager Mode meets the Pokémon Trading Card Game (which was a guilty pleasure of mine on the Game Boy Colour). Seems to be quite fun so far and a nice little diversion from the main game, so probably quite fairly priced at 400 points then.

Gaming Tuesday (On Sunday)

After going a bit ebay mad last week I got the chance to settle down with the (thankfully) only two games I won. Firstly Rainbow Six Vegas transfers all the tense hostage rescuing from gloomy warehouses to glitzy casinos. Or at least the box promises that then gives you a bewilderingly grey and brown opening level in Mexico or somewhere. It's like a tour de force of grey, going from a town to a train yard, some warehouses, some tunnels, some more warehouses. Although I think grey and brown was still awesome when it came out. I can't remember. Anyway, the checkpoints are also horrible. Hence why the opening level stuck with me (and I was stuck with it) for so long. I'm not a Rainbow Six veteran in my defence, if anything I found the squad combat confusing as my team-mates seemed keen to stand behind a car and shoot into it as opposed to around at the enemy. This meant that I found myself leading the line and dying which then left me half an hour back with so much rage that I felt like kicking puppies or children. But for a game of it's age it still looks pretty and bar said team-mate hiccups everything works pretty well. I shall, as ever, persevere.

Burnout Paradise is another game from a while ago although I actually rented this when I first got my 360 and fell in love with it. I've been waiting for The Ultimate Box to drop low enough in price to pick up and I felt that the £7 I paid for it was pretty reasonable. Although probably not as reasonable as the £3 I paid for Rainbow Six. Anyway, the game is as joyous as I remember even if the other events aren't as enjoyable as the carnage fuelled Road Rage. It's literally a hands in the air moment when one of those comes up at the cross-roads. Played on from where my old save was which was a little jarring going in halfway through the game but I quickly found my feet again. Luckily there's a whole ocean of added on content to wade through as well afterwards although 1000MSP for the new island seems quite pricey when Perfect Dark is out next week for 800MSP. Might have to put it off till the next student loan installment. Ah government funded gaming. Love it.