The LevelJunkie's Lair

Today they released AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard For Gravity on Steam, and I’d preordered it a while ago to take advantage of a discount. Yes, that is its full name.

It’s basically about jumping off of buildings and try to land in a ring at the bottom, scoring as much as you can along the way by ‘hugging’ and ‘kissing’ buildings (get near them once to tag it for a ‘kiss’, but stay close to it for a sustained period for a series of ‘hugs’), hitting glass score plates, flipping off protesters, and spraying graffiti (though I don’t think I’ve unlocked the latter two yet). It’s all about maximizing your score by trying to find the best routes and taking appropriate risks; swing wildly about and you can reach more buildings for kisses and hit more scoring spots, but you’re more likely to bounce or crash.

There’s been a decent variety to the levels so far, with some taking place on a mountain as well, where you have to make sure you keep enough lateral momentum not to crash into the mountainside while still keeping close enough to ‘hug’ it. They can get fairly hard too, with some taking me numerous attempts just to land safely at all, or only scoring one or two stars when I thought I’d done fairly well.

There’s also some kind of surreal dystopian twist to the world it takes place in, seen through things like news updates at the level select screen (reported by the most disinterested DJ ever) and ‘meditations’ you unlock, but that’s just background flavour so far.

Yesterday I also spent a bit of time with Hard Truck Apocalypse, which I’d picked up in some sale a little while ago. It’s reminiscent of Autoduel, being based around driving around with armed vehicles, doing quests and shooting up other people’s trucks.

The story is rather cliche (the basic out for revenge for my father’s death, etc.) and the production values are rather low, especially the horrible voice acting. It’s also rather convenient that everybody in the future has to wear masks that just happen to remove the need for facial animations in the cutscenes… Still, you get to drive around and blow stuff up, which can be fun enough on its own. The main complaint so far is that there’s been an awful lot of backtracking through the same roads, but it looks like I’ll be sent to a new area next at least.

I was able to play around with Prototype for a bit today. It definitely has the open-world feel, though it’s a bit empty right now since I’m still fairly close to the start. There isn’t really much to do except a few races, starting the next mission, and causing some minor havoc that’s not really worth the effort in terms of xp earned. Stuff should be opening up soon though, as I can ‘consume’ certain people, gain their memories, and open up parts of the story and new people to meet.

The premise is a bit overwrought — you’re the product of some experiment gone wrong, an infection is spreading, and you’re out for revenge, blah blah blah. The movement isn’t as precise as Crackdown, and probably deliberately so, and there’s no stopping to contemplate how to reach a particular point — you just run straight up the side of a building. The controls while sprinting and wall-running are a bit awkward, and I’m constantly overshooting the tops of buildings and falling off the other side, but apparently there are upgrades that will help refine the controls.

And for someone who’s wanted so desperately by the military, it’s kind of odd how I can run up a wall, leap off a building and land in the middle of the street with a big concrete-breaking thud, or sprint through traffic and bounce off the roofs of cars, and nobody wandering around seems to think it odd.