Assassin's Creed (360)

How do the save points on this work, exactly? Last time I played, I'd made it all the way to Damascus. When I started playing today, I was 15 minutes away, although all the view points I'd reached previously were still "counted". I don't get it.

Anyway. I ran round the city a lot, which was fun, eavesdropped some people, beat up lots of guards who seemed to enjoy harassing locals, and climbed all the view points.

Then, it was time to do the kill. Which was easy, although I was less sneaky assassin, more blundering sword swiper.

Rez HD (360)

Straight in, no trial, no testing, no hesitation - I just paid for and downloaded the full game. And? It's crap.

NOT REALLY! LOL!

No, it's great. It's just like the PS2 version I have, only with three main differences:

1. I don't have to use that awful PS2 pad.
2. It's slightly better looking.
3. It sounds AMAZING.

Admittedly, one of those things could be solved by the Dreamcast version, and another by plugging my PS2 into my new surround sound system, so I've not really gained a huge amount by waiting for the XBLA version. But that matters not!

It is harder than I recall, as I couldn't get onto Level 2 on my first go, and died on the Level 2 boss on my second go. Tch.

Undertow (360)

So I hated the demo, but Microsoft gave it away free last week (as a "we're sorry Xbox Live has been broken for a month - here, have some crap" gesture) so I'd downloaded it. You can see that there's been a week's delay in playing it - I was hardly excited to do so.

It's still crap. Like, really crap. I was compelled to switch it off after the first level, and I really don't see myself ever playing it again.

Hurrah for Microsoft, eh?

Assassin's Creed (360)

Started this for the sole purpose of trying out something other than Tony Hawk on my new speakers. It doesn't (yet) have the immersion, soundwise, but then I have only played it for just over an hour.

Well, I say I've played it for just over an hour. In reality, I've watched it a lot, pressed a button every now and again, and been shown how to press buttons. Oh, and I've been killed and somehow came back to life. Or something.

The running around and climbing is fun. The fighting is OK. The handy-holdy nature of the game isn't so great, though. But I have found a traitor by eavesdropping and "interrogating" (i.e. punching him in the face), then got a horse, rode most of the way to Damascus, and climbed lots of lookout points on the way.

Oh, and had some scenes where I'm not Altair. But I won't spoil it for you, even if half the internets have already...

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

So I got my subwoofer working today. Good grief does it make a difference! Every skate-check gets a heavy thump, bailing makes a deep crunch, even aggro kicking gets a meaty whoomph from the speaker. Excellent!

As far as the game went, I (again) beat a few more street challenges, and then mopped up some more Classic and Hawk-Man goals. The Museum Classic goals were bloody difficult, although really shouldn't have been. Could I natas spin the switches to turn on moon gravity? Could I hell.

Oh! I said "hell", and "natas" is "Satan" backwards! LOLZ

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

Since today was mainly taken up with setting up my new surround sound kit, I didn't spend long playing games. I did, however, break Tony out for a while and finished off the last Uber Goals, completing those remaining. The Pro one was really quite hard (on the Nail The Trick demo especially), until I realised you could manage more than one of the ten required tricks in one combo.

Then, as usual, I completed some more street goals. 87% done now, I think.

Incidently, the new sound system makes this game even more amazing - echoes, car horns, clunks, thuds - the lot.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

Yes, I did skip two days of playing games. I was busy! Mainly with resurrecting the dead. But then I came back... to Tony. Again. Can't stay away.

So I thought I'd have a crack the Uber Goals again, and managed the Hardcore one without a problem. I haven't attempted the Rigger one at all yet, and the Pro one? Not looking forward to trying that again. It was hard!

Also completed some more street goals and improved a few earlier street goals.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

So about this "I'm done with the game now" post last night. It was clearly a lie, wasn't it?

Completed Pro in two more Classic Goals runs, Am in a third, and one Am and one Pro for the Pac-Man-meets-Tony-Hawk "Hawk-man" runs. Not a chance in hell I'll get Sick for any of the Classic or Hawk-man goals. They're clearly not possible.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

OK. I think after today's session I'm "done" with this now. I'll no doubt come back to improve on some of the bits I've only got Am on, or for a bit of a skate for fun. Or maybe I'll play online a bit.

But I've done all the story goals in all the storylines, most of the skate spots, impressed all the pros and all sorts of other things. I've not done many "classic" goals though, I've just realised, so perhaps I'll mop a few of them up too.

Bam's challenge today was a pain. You have to find a load of "treasure" in the museum, and I just scraped the required 20 found, but all 35? I can only see another two, let alone reach them and find another 13! Pff.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

I thought the game was about to take a turn for the crap when I realised Bam Margera was in it. His sections in "The Tony Hawk Dark Days Trilogy" (that's THUG, THUG 2 and THAW to you) were the least Tony Hawk-y and, generally, crap. I mean, I love Bam and all, but he added too much Jackass to the game.

Thankfully, his story was mostly about outdoing him with proper skating and climbing stuff, rather than the usual driving cars, blowing things up, Stuff With Shopping Trolleys and other silliness, so that was OK.

After him, I had to mod a load of lines and take photos, and then take part in a rigging demo with Jeff King. There's not much left of the Rigger storyline now.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

Yeah, I know I completed it earlier, but there's still quite a bit to do. Not least, almost all of the Rigger storyline. Which is what I spent most of my time on.

It seems very hand-holdy. You're told exactly what to rig or mod, and how. Yeah, you've a bit of freedom over adding other bits, but I'm yet to find a reason to do that.

Also completed a few more Street challenges that I'd missed, and now my stats are maxed out, I managed to get Pro on a few I previously only had Am on.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360): COMPLETED!

So it would seem that in order to complete the game, you just have to do X many goals, and then impress Y many pros, then do the final video with the pros in.

So I did! Hurrah!

I still have most of the Rigger stuff to go, and loads more street challenges, but the actual Story is now complete, and I got the credits and stuff. So an excellent game by all accounts. I'd sit it a little behind THP8, but ahead of THUG, THUG2 and THAW. I really should place the whole series in order of aceness at some point.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

With more stats built up (everything bar wallride and spin), I had another go at Mike V's huge gap thing - and managed it first time. Ditto for the few gaps he asked me to nail afterwards too. That opened up a load more of stuff in the Hardcore story.

Completed all of Dustin's "missions", most of which involved "skate checking" - punching people as I skated round. I then did a few Classic goals, and went off to build the rest of my stats up, maxing them out.

Boogie Bunnies (360)

Tried the other game modes today. Classic is much harder than Arcade, because the bunnies move forward every three moves, not every few seconds. This means that when you're in a panic and need a specific colour bunny, you can't just chuck bunnies until you get is as you'll just quicken your demise. As a result, I died halfway through the jungle levels.

Endless Mode is just that. Only got around 20,000 points there though, which is crap.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

I've given up on trying to clear the gap that Mike V wants me to do (for now), and have instead moved back to the Pro storyline until my stats have increased a bit. I've bumped into another Pro skater and his photographer, and we took loads of photos of me doing stuff.

He taught me how to "nail the manual" too, which is really quite hard. I then went off for a bit and completed some spot street challenges and built up my stats some more.

Boogie Bunnies (360)

Yeah, it's just a normal, nothing special puzzle game. But it's cute and fun and that's all you need, right?

It seems so, as I really like it. Reached the beach level on Arcade Mode, before dying. That placed me 307th in the world - amazing! Of course, I'll be 300,007th this time tomorrow...

Turok (Demo) (360)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHA.

What a rubbish game.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

Didn't play for all that long today, but I did finish off Arto's chapter with the last of his video clips and the final of the Tri-City comp. That netted me a few more achievements.

I then went back to Mike V's chapter (he does the hardcore stuff, dontchaknow), and completed a few things. I'm totally stuck now though, as I have to jump a huuuuuuge gap, and there's no way in hell I can make it.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

Eric is in it. Yeah, he looks and sounds different, but he's still Eric. Eric, your rival in THUG and THUG2. And your rival here too. Pah. How annoying.

But I beat him in a competition (after beating him in a previous one, which he'd rigged so he won anyway), so that was OK.

Took part in lots of video shoots for Arto too, and learned how to Nail the Grab from Bob Burnquist. Explored the city a bit, and managed to Am (and in a few cases, Pro) some spot challenges. I'm having problems though, particularly with manuals and grinds, seeing what route I'm supposed to be taking.

And I built up my stats a bit. Turns out the reason I couldn't revert is because they've changed the control to do it! For ever it has been the grind button at the top of a half-pipe. Now, for some reason, it's RB and grind at the same time. WHY.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

Played for a little bit more this evening. I'm mainly concentrating on the "Pro" story at the moment (although I'm not very far in). I did get an achievement for completing a chapter, though.

It seems you do build up your stats in the same way as Project 8, so I might do that next time I play. It does seem very hard otherwise, and I can't seem to do reverts at all, which leads me to believe I have to speak to someone and learn how first.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (360)

With Eternal Sonata now complete, I started something else. I love Tony Hawk games. If you're a long-time reader of this gaming diary, you'd know this. I went through pretty much every single available TH game, even the crap Game Boy Colour ones, a couple of years ago. It was amazing.

Anyway. This version seems to have taken a step away from the fantastic (and complete return to form) Tony Hawk's Project 8, instead looking a bit more like Tony Hawk's Underground, where the series went a bit wrong. Hopefully, it's only superficial, and already I've found the trick markers and stuff from THP8, so all isn't lost!

So far, I've done the first four "things". A chapter in each of the four "modes" - rigger, pro, hardcore and street. The stats system has changed (again), so unlike recent games, I can't just built those up before I start properly - so shock! I had play properly!

But it all seems good so far. It's a bit grey, but that's probably just the area you start in.

Eternal Sonata (360): COMPLETED! AGAIN!

I was getting fed up with the dungeon crawling to kill Rondo, so I decided enough was enough. I went and explored some lower (or rather, higher - they're basements, remember) levels and found two better weapons and some more armour, before leveling up my characters some more. With Jazz and Allegretto on level 75, and Falsetto on 70, I thought the time had come to try Rondo again.

And she was easy! Well, not easy exactly, but I didn't need many items, and had her on the ropes constantly - two (or even three) 6 Harmony Chain combos each turn soon had her wiped out. Aces!

Then it was onto the final floor, with the final dungeon boss and the final soul shard. It was the penultimate end-of-game boss again, only harder. Except he didn't really seem a lot harder, probably as I'd now leveled up some 25 levels to get to him. Killed him first go, although used all my items and Jazz was dead when I did so. Phew! Claves resurrected!

Finally, it was time to return to the scene of the final chapter and kill the real end of game boss again. I won't spoil it for anyone by saying who it was, but now I was on level 79 with weapons and armour twice as powerful as before, the boss could barely touch me. Even a full-on, most powerful attack, which i didn't block, managed just 2,500HP damage. When you've got over 40,000 to play with, that's nothing!

And then I watched the end of game sequence again, which is exactly as it was before.

And no crashing today!

Eternal Sonata (360)

So I spent three hours building up the stats of my characters, and killed enough baddies to get the almost-100-million gold to buy one of the soul shards. So I went and tried to kill Rondo again.

And died.

So I bumped the levels of my characters up some more, and swapped Viola out for Falsetto (as Falsetto can built the multiplier up way faster). With Jazz and Allegretto both on level 66, and Falsetto on 58, I tried again. And died. Again. Gah!

Eternal Sonata (360)

This Mysterious Unison dungeon is a bit hard, isn't it? Well, you perhaps don't know, if you've not played it. But yes, it's hard.

I'm up to (or rather, down to - they're basements) Floor 11 now, and finding the baddies there give me a whopping 3,000,000 gold each fight. So that 99,999,999 gold soul shard doesn't seem so difficult to get now!

At the end of Floor 11 was another boss - Rondo. Again. Only she's bloody impossible this time around, having far too much time each move, and having twice as many moves as I get. Since the Mysterious Unison dungeon only has one save point (right at the start) and you can only really return to it at the end of each floor, dying at the hand of Rondo meant losing some 30,000,000 gold and 45 minutes game time. That's worse than when the game was crashing!

Eternal Sonata (360)

Um, yeah. So I completed it last night, but one of the end of game bosses dropped an item called the Hero Crest, and I wanted to know what it did. Mr Internet told me that there was another dungeon, near the Double Reed Tower (where you "end" the game), that you could open with the crest. So I did.

And bloody hell, is it hard in there.

To start with, there was another boss that I'd beaten previously, but then the whole dungeon became filled with more of that same boss. And hard-as-nails pirates. Pirates who, when they fight, fight in threes. Not only that, but one of your characters gets a turn, then all three pirates get a turn each, basically meaning they get three times as many attacks as you do. And if they ambush you, you're dead, as they get three turns in before you even get a chance to block. And even if you do block, they can kill you in two hits anyway. Gah!

Thankfully, you can just run past most of them.

You can't run past the other bosses though. More repeat bosses at that. I'm in the dungeon looking for bits of Claves in order to resurrect her, and I've found three bits so far. And someone wants me to buy another for 99,999,999 gold. When I only have 81,000 gold. So that's not going to happen. Hmm.

Eternal Sonata (360): COMPLETED!

I was right about how close to the end of the game I was, but still there was another chapter after Chapter 7. It was very short, though.

Before that, though, I had some more previous bosses to kill again (adding to the SuckySuck(TM)-ness of the end of game proceedings), and then, with the Xylophone Tower completed, it was time to kill the big dragon baddie thing that Legano (I think that's his name) turned into. He was actually pretty easy, though.

Then, the game crashed. Again, and again, and again. I couldn't progress any further, as although I'd saved my game after killing the boss, it wouldn't let me start the final chapter. I cleaned the cache and physically cleaned the disc, and finally it let me progress. Where I had to kill, well, a bloody great spoiler, actually.

And that was it. The end sequence was almost an hour long, with cut scenes and story, and then some strange "life lessons" from the characters, then the credits, and then a strange little bonus cartoon about Mr Snail and Mr Caterpillar. No, really.

My "game completed" save says 24 hours, 2 minutes. That's a bit shorter than I was expecting, but still puts it in the realm of "long game" - in my book, anyway. Overall, it was a great RPG. I loved it from start to finish, and the only frustrations I had were with the crashing in the latter half of the game - which seemed to get worse and worse the further in I got.

So that's the first game of 2008 I've completed. Hurrah!

Assault Heroes (360)

Beck got a load of free XBLA games as part of the "10 free games for you and a friend" deal new 360 owners can sign up for, and she let me have the code for Assault Heroes. I did play the demo of it when it first game out, and seem to recall that it wasn't anything special, but not bad. I didn't buy it was it's not really my sort of thing.

So I played it today, and managed to reach the giant spider at the end of the first level. Who was way harder than I recall in the demo, and refused to die. He's got three energy bars, and I managed to get them all to about half-way, but no matter how much i shot and bombed him, half0way was where they stayed. Bah.

Eternal Sonata (360)

So I completed all of the Xylophone Tower (with two bosses I'd already beaten, again - that didn't bode well), and opened up Noise Dunes. That led me to another tower, which appears to contain more bosses.

Bosses I've beaten before. Again. Which means that Eternal Sonata has a SuckySuck(TM) bit. darthvadernooooooooooo.jpg

And then, to make things even worse, once I'd killed a boss and was mere millimetres from a save point, the game crashed again. I'd forgotten to clear the cache (which I have to do all the time now, or it crashes). Bah. So I had to kill the boss again.

Omega Five (Demo) (360)

OK, so it's nowhere near as bad as Tron, but it's still not great. I'm not a big fan of shooters like this anyway, so that might have something to do with my dislike of it. However, there are still issues.

For example, your character is far too big on the screen, which makes the game difficult to play - not least because the screen gets cluttered very quickly with the also-too-big baddies. Then there's the baddies that just leap onto the screen without warning as to where they're going to appear, making avoidance either impossible, or a test of memory.

And then there's an issue which is probably my fault. I thought the pink triangles were bullets, so spent my time avoiding them, which proved to be impossible. Then I realised you had to collect them. Pff.

Oh, and what's the point of shooting out your metal familiar on a chain? It doesn't seem to do very much.

Tron (Demo) (360)

OH

MY

LORD

What the hell is this? Worst controls ever: You have to aim your hand to shoot, but it doesn't do it like in Geometry Wars (where you point in the direction you want), and it doesn't do it like Asteriods (where you rotate) - it doesn't seem to do anything you want. Rubbish.

Worst light-cycle game ever. Totally impossible tank game. Far too easy "get into the MCP core!" game.

I've never played the original, so this was all a bit of a shock to me.

Eternal Sonata (360)

Allegretto and Co leapt into the giant swirly hole thing, and vanished! They awoke to find themselves, um, somewhere. With lots of dead people. Glowing, ball-like dead people. Yes, really.

And there's a desert that I can't enter, instead having to climb the Xylophone Tower (to hit a switch to open it), which is full of somewhat difficult baddies. Well, they're difficult as I'm trying to kill them with some of the characters that are on lower levels at the moment (such as Polka, who is crap). There are some "listen, then repeat" musical tests in the tower too, and I've done two so far.

I get the feeling I'm somewhat close to the end of the game now. I'm pretty sure the end of game boss will be in the desert.

Eternal Sonata (360)

No crashes today, although I've doing the cache-cleaning thing every time I start the game up now, just in case.

Went into Mt. Rock, and got blown around a lot and found some chests (mostly containing stuff worse than stuff I already had), before finally catching up with Prince Crescendo. Then Count Waltz (is he allowed to be a Count? He's only about 12, isn't he?) appeared with a million flying dragons-wot-have-donkey-heads and tried to convince Polka to go with him. Which she did, until he slapped her and then we all had a lovely fight.

Which I won. But that's not the end - oh no. Leguto (Waltz's butler, I assume) drank some thing with a glowing Agogo in it, and became a huge monster, ripping a hole in the world and doing a runner.

But that's Chapter 6 done! Hurrah!

Eternal Sonata (360)

Had another couple of crashes to start with today - again at the shopkeeper. Cleared the cache again and it sorted it again, though.

The Aria Temple was a bit strange. Besides the large areas with no baddies in them, and the big room with nothing but baddies in (that can be totally avoided), there were several treasure chests that kept moving. I'd go for one, get jumped on by a baddie, kill it, and then the chest would move! Bizarre.

At the top of the tower was Rondo - the woman who killed Claves. And Falsetto came back too, and we all had a fight.

With Rondo dead (well, I assume she's dead, anyway), and Chapter 6 begun, it was back to the castle, only to find Crescendo and Serenade have both done a runner. They seem to have gone to Forte to sacrifice themselves for Baroque. I don't really understand how that's going to work, but still.

We went after them, through the warp gates of the To Coda Ruins. That didn't take too long, and soon we'd left the ruins and found a scary old woman next to a Cello Tree, who asked Polka to take a fortune reading. The reading turned out to be bad, but no-one said exactly what it was. Then the woman vanished. It was all very odd.

Now I'm about to enter Mt. Rock. Ooh!

Eternal Sonata (360)

After some hunting around on the internets, I eventually found what appears to be a method of clearing the game cache (documented here), which seemed to work and so I could carry on playing without it crashing every 25 seconds.

Played for another hour or so, finding a book in the forest outside Baroque, returning it to a bloke in the castle, then returning through the forest to the Aria Temple. I've not entered it yet, though.

Eternal Sonata (360)

Um, yes. So other games don't exist at the moment, it would seem. And plenty of time has been spent on this again today too - taking me from 13 hours to over 16 hours game time, according to the save files.

Killed the pirate captain first of all today, which gained Salsa a new hat (um, great), and then we reached Baroque, where it was snowing. Lots. We decided to leave, after a concert and lots of shopping and exploring, and headed for Ritardando via a frozen mountain path. Where the game crashed as soon as I met the first baddie. Luckily, I'd saved literally seconds previous. Made it over the mountain (well, up it then through the lava-y interior - seems it's a volcano, not a mountain), and somehow ended up back in Agogo Forest, where March was waiting.

March, and Fugue - the guy who almost killed Chopin and Polka right near the start of the game. So I had to fight him again, and killed him!

Everyone split up then. Polka went home, March and Salsa stayed in Agogo Forest, and Beat and Chopin decided to go back to Allegretto and Beat's hideout in Ritardando - where Allegretto had already arrived. We were sent on a mission to rid the church basement of "ghosts", and we joined by Viola, March and Salsa, although Allegretto chickened out and went to see Polka. The "ghosts" were easy to kill, and after some 40 minutes of story cut scenes, pretty much everyone then ended up back in Baroque again. Everyone except Claves (duh, she's dead!) and Falsetto (done a runner in the rain), that is.

Jazz suggested we walked round the town a bit, so we did. Spoke to a priest who suggested we go and look at the Aria Temple, and then went to a shop to stock up on supplies. Except the game crashed again. Bah. I've not got to re-do much, though. Still, it gave me an excuse to stop.

Still really enjoying the game, though. I've had several aborted RPG efforts over the last few years; particularly Lostmagic and Lunar Dragon Song, both of which were crap (although for different reasons), so it's nice to play a good, well written RPG for a change.

Eternal Sonata (360)

It's far too easy to spend lots of time on this without realising. I started early this afternoon, and then suddenly it was dark outside.

Chapter 2 was soon over. I had to fight Tuba again on the bridge by the fort, and although I won, he took out the bridge and we all fell to our watery deaths. Well, not quite.

The beginning of Chapter 3 showed that my party had been split into two groups. Allegretto, Viola, Jazz, Falsetto and Claves in one, and everyone else (presumably at that time) in the other. The whole of this chapter was based on this group, which, having reached the Andantino base, split further leaving just Allegretto, Falsetto and Viola. With those, I solved some puzzles in a graveyard, and then there was a cutscene with Claves' long and drawn out death speech. Yeah, to hell with spoilers - she's dead. Probably.

And then it was Chapter 4! As expected, I was now in charge of the other group of people - Polka, Chopin, Beat and Salsa. They'd been rescued by a boat, the captain of which (Crescendo) appears to look exactly like Jazz, only with blond hair and no earring. Anyway, soon after chatting with people on the ship, pirates attacked!

I took the party over to the pirate ship, found a key (eventually) to the pirate captain's room, and then died. Bah.

My game time says almost 13 hours! Blimey.

Eternal Sonata (360)

This Chapter 2 is a bit long, isn't it? I'm still on it now! I found the boy at the bottom of the cliff, eventually, and then stayed the night at his parents' inn. The next day I went Castle Forte (having another, more successful, "jam" session on the way), but couldn't get in.

Instead, some bloke called Tuba who looked like a cross between Ramm-Man from He-Man and Birdie from Street Fighter Alpha decided to fight me. I won, but we all got chucked in a dungeon anyway. A dungeon with the girl (Salsa) I was looking for in it! And a dungeon Allegretto could break us out of easily, what with him being a thief and stuff.

We went into the gaping hole in a wall in the dungeon, which turned out to be a secret path back out to a place on the Hanon Road, where I'd previously seen a strange rock. I'd already guessed that was where we'd come out. Bumped into some people coming to rescue Salsa as we exited the rock, saving them a job. We're all off back to goat-girl's village now.

Eternal Sonata (360)

Right, the Fort is all done and dusted, and I worked my way along the road to Forte City, killing green flying angel goats on the way, and helping a traveling salesman by fighting some dragon things with rocks on the ends of their tails. As you do.

Sold all Beat's photos (mostly of mice and onions) to him for 500 gold or so each, which I thought was pretty good, but the photos I took after that sold at Forte City for waaaaay more - one of an angel goat's arse got a Rank B rating and netted me almost 5,000 gold, and a mugshot of the same goat for me almost twice that. So much money! Even stocking up on loads of items (which I've not really used much of yet) and new armour and weapons has barely even lightened by purse. Excellent.

Anyway, so in the city I found the inn, and the girl there has lost "Phil" and I need to find him. It seems he may have fallen down a cliff, so I'm making my way down now, killing bats and having a "jam" with an old man, who gave me an F for my mad muzik skillz and told me I was sad. Pff.

Eternal Sonata (360)

Really enjoying this. Even the (some would say) tedious repetitive battles. But they're fun! It took me at least another hour to figure out how to get out of the fort (the switches move a room that acts as a bridge - aha!), and had to fight a bit armoured wolf boss thing on the way, who wasn't exactly easy, but was certainly more manageable than all the other bosses I've fought so far!

It's all that leveling up, I think. Oh, and my party is now at Level 3 (or at least, can be Level 3 if I so choose). That means less thinking time and more action time in battles, but more "slots" for magic attacks.

Metal Slug 3 (Demo) (360)

On one hand, it's Metal Slug 3. On the other had, it has this horrific graphics filter on and slowdown. But it's Metal Slug 3.

Decisions, decisions...

Eternal Sonata (360)

Spent just over an hour wandering round the inside of the fort, pressing switches and stuff. Found a sign that said there were five switches, one "that goes back", which I'm assuming is the "reset" one I found but didn't touch. I think I've hit the other five now - I just need to make it back to a door that was locked before (and, I'm assuming unlocked now).

Had some real trouble to start with, as the baddies in the fort were a bit too strong for me, but now I'm at level 15 or 16 for all my characters, I can usually kill all the baddies off before they even get to attack. Beat is (or rather, was) dead though, but somehow has now regained 560-ish HP. I'm not sure how.

Eternal Sonata (360)

Played about an hour more of this, not realising that my previous "two hours" were actually nearer three and a half. Time sink!

I've made it to a fort, which is full of mice. I'm pleased to see that standard RPGisms are in full force, with the same baddies as earlier in the game, only harder and a different colour. Reminds me of the Chirpers from Phantasy Star III.

Oh, and I now have five people in my party, as a goat-herder woman with a bow has joined.

Eternal Sonata (360)

I've not been feeling too well today (no, not drinking excess from last night - I had this before them, just not so bad), so didn't fancy anything fast-paced to play or camera-swingingly nauseating (I recall some badness when playing Crackdown whilst unwell once), so I didn't pick up Mario Galaxy or Psychonauts, instead opting for this, which I got for Christmas.

The first thing that hits you about the game is how gorgeous it looks. I don't think I've ever been as impressed by graphics as I was today. Yeah, I played the demo a long time ago, but didn't seem to take it in then - besides, there was no opening sequence in that.

There are lots of cut scenes, but they haven't bothered me yet. There's a lot of story about Chopin's life too (the game is set in a dream he's having as he lies on his deathbed), and some of his music. It's brilliantly presented.

In terms of gameplay, it's pretty much a standard turn-based RPG. There's a bit more to battles than just taking turns (you can move around, for example), but it's not complicated. I've played through all the first chapter and a little of the second so far, roughly two hours of play. Loving it!