Category Archives: Xbox

Okay, That’s Enough Of The Balls

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As expected, I finally finished Switchball tonight. The last two stages had shorter par times than some of the previous stages, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were any easier, and it took me nearly an hour to finish the last one.

Of that last stage’s hour, probably 40 minutes were spent retrying just the very last checkpoint, which was yet another part where you started a second ball rolling and had to ‘babysit’ it as it rolled along on its own to prevent it from falling off at various points (the second-last stage had a couple parts like this too, but not nearly as hard). A combination of extreme length and tight timing at various points meant that the slightest error would cause you to fail, and so many retries were needed before I could pull off every step perfectly, especially when failing an early step prevents you from even being able to practice the later ones.

It’s done now though, and I’m not even going to try for the medal times, so my ball-rolling days are now at an end for the time being. Unless I pick up Beautiful Katamari…

These Balls Are Tiring

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I took another stab at finishing Switchball tonight, but only managed to make it through four of the remaining six stages before feeling like I’d had enough for the night. The difficulty is fairly high now, depending on things like precisely landing the air ball at multiple spots in a row, parts that make you race to keep up with some other triggered event, positioning crates perfectly and quickly (it’s really easy to get them jammed diagonally into a narrow passage, instead of straight on like you need), and really long sequences without a checkpoint.

The stages are getting really long, too. One had a bronze medal time of over 14 minutes, but with all the checkpoint retries I needed, it wound up taking me nearly 50 minutes to complete it. There’s no way I’m getting any of the medal achievements for this game.

Only two stages left to go now though, so hopefully it’ll only take one more night…

More Fun With Balls

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I was feeling a few pangs of guilt about all the games I still have unfinished, especially since I haven’t really finished any recently but have purchased several more since. So, I figured I’d better get back to some of them, and tonight I picked up where I left off in We Love Katamari and got a fair bit done.

(cut for looooongness)
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And To Round Out The Day…

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Speaking of cleaning up quests, I popped onto WoW briefly and finished up some in the Stonetalon Mountains range. And picked up a few more, of course. I hate the quests that tell you to report to Soandso over on the other side of the world; if you take it, it clutters up your quest log for quite a while since you might not be heading there anytime soon, but if you don’t take it, you could forget about it, you might miss out on an unsharable chain quest, and have to go even farther out of your way to go back and get it.

And to kill a bit of time while waiting for other things to download, I finished a few more Switchball levels, and am now halfway through world 4. Timing is becoming a bit more important, but it’s still mostly puzzles, and my overall completion times continue to be nowhere near the times needed for medals. I don’t think I’ll have the time to go back and practice them enough to get medals, but it’s still pretty fun.

Beep Beep, Comin’ Through

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Not much time for games today, so I just gave the new track pack (Twin Ring Motegi) for Forza 2 a try. Unfortunately, it doesn’t add any new career races that use it, which is disappointing, so you’re left with using it in the time trials and multiplayer.

The time trials were simple enough to beat; Forza could have used a bit more difficulty there or at least different target times for different rankings. And unfortunately, to race against the AI on this track you have to kind of fake it with an Xbox Live game where all the drivers are set to AIs instead of other players, but XBL is quite flaky at the moment as the maintenance period tomorrow draws near. Ah well, I’ll have to try a real race some other time. I want at least some practice on it before trying against other people…

As for the track itself, I remember it from Gran Turismo 4, but driving it feels a lot different here than it did there, for some reason. In particular, the last set of chicanes on the long course seems a lot easier to navigate here than it did in GT4, where the 45 degree bends were quite narrow. Otherwise, it’s a pretty average track, with nothing particularly tricky. There’s at least one spot where the suggested braking line is completely wrong, though; as you’re coming over one crest, the line is telling you to brake hard, but you should actually be keeping at least a bit of throttle on.

Shootermania

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Since I was swinging by a mall earlier today anyway, I figured I’d stop in at the EB Games there. Which is usually a bad idea, since I rarely leave one empty-handed… Sigh.

I picked up the PC versions that just came out of Gears of War and Call of Duty 4. That might make multiplayer with some friends and forum acquaintances difficult, alas, but I just prefer using the mouse and keyboard for shooters, and GoW even has some extra stuff (story chapters, maps, an editor) for the Windows version. I haven’t done much more than install them, but I’m sure I’ll get around to them. Eventually…

It’s strange how I’ve bought so many shooters this year, even though I didn’t really consider myself an FPS fan. I’d gotten distracted and neglected to keep up with them since ye olde “run and gun and get the red keycard” days, so maybe I just got sucked back in by the additional depth they’ve developed and the large bumper crop of good ones this year. CoD4, for example, is supposed to have a great multiplayer side, with an almost RPG-ish advancement and ranking system.

And I also picked up Flatout: Ultimate Carnage for the 360. Sometimes you want to test your technical racing prowess around a world-class racing circuit. And sometimes you just want to smash the hell out of everyone and everything…

XBLA Friday

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I wound up buying the full edition of Switchball, and completed the first two worlds (of five) tonight. As you might expect, it starts off fairly easy but then soon gets harder. It’s usually pretty clear what you have to do, but pulling off the timing, avoiding rolling off the edge, etc., can sometimes be tricky. By the end, my final time to complete the stages (your score, effectively) was far past the expected ‘bronze’ time.

Since I’m already 2/5 of the way done, it probably won’t take too long to finish as long as it doesn’t get insanely difficult. The real challenge lies in redoing the stages over and over again to try and get the bronze/silver/gold medal times. Of the 12 stages I’ve done so far, I’ve only managed to get two silver medals and one bronze, so that part could take me a while. If ever…

I also popped into Lumines for a bit, to check out some of the new skins. The “Breeze” skin is another video skin by Genki Rockets, and the song is catchy enough. I probably won’t play it in its own challenge mode much though, since the video is a bit distracting, but maybe I’ll drop it into skin edit mode every once in a while.

The other skin pack is supposed to be a holiday-themed one, but of the skins I’ve seen so far, it’s only in an abstract sense. I don’t know why I keep buying these packs when I’m not really that great at the game; I only managed to unlock four of the 20 skins in my first attempt at it, and I still haven’t even unlocked all of the basic skins yet. The “Amber Moon” song is pretty rocking though, and I expect to use it in skin edit mode a lot.

Time To Scratch My Rolling-Ball Itch

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Before work, I popped on my 360 to try out the trial version of Switchball, though the demo levels are little more than a basic tutorial and one ‘real’ level. There’s a lot more emphasis on environmental interaction (e.g., pushing crates into place) and less on getting the precisely right momentum and direction compared to Marble Blast Ultra.

Instead of picking up one-use powerups, you change your ball’s state at certain chargers to give you certain abilities. You usually need a specific ability to cross certain parts, so it doesn’t feel like you have as much freedom to try and use the abilities in unexpected ways.

The graphics are kinda nice, but I did notice significant screen tearing at certain points. I normally don’t mind too much, but it was pretty blatant at spots. I hope there’s a bit more variety and freedom in the full game, but it’s hard to tell from the trial. I’ll probably wind up buying the full thing anyway.