No updates because I’ve been too busy rocking out on Guitar Hero (which got its proper release today - hurry!)
Once I’ve played through a game, I rarely go back and play it again, unless it offers a significantly different experience the second time around. For example, when you finish Shadow of the Colossus, it unlocks a “hard” mode. Balls to that. I’ve got an ever-increasing list of games I have to play and an ever-decreasing amount of time to play them in. And especially not when it took a monumental effort to stop myself from smashing the controller to smithereens even on the “normal” difficulty.
Guitar Hero is so perfectly balanced, I can’t help myself. I’ve worked through “easy” and “medium” and now I’m halfway through “difficult.” Why? Because, unlike most games where luck has as much to do with your progress as actual skill, I can actually see myself getting better at Guitar Hero. When I first started playing through the game on “medium”, I thought it might be fun to see what “I Wanna Be Sedated” was like on “expert” difficulty. I found out: Scary. I was booed off stage before I’d even reached the first verse. Now that medium is a long-distant memory and “difficult” is making me its bitch, I went back to “I Wanna Be Sedated” on expert. And y’know what? I finished it. On my third attempt. But I finished it.
To make matters worse, I’m finding myself replaying songs on “easy” (and “Medium”), just so I can fill the scoreboard up with top marks.
The last time a game hooked me like this – improving my skill and beating my own scores, just for the fun of it – was Super Mario Kart on the SNES. An odd comparison, to be sure, but one that makes me happy. I really didn’t think people made games like this any more. Fun little games with no real narrative depth that can consume hours and still have you coming back for more.
One other thing I’ve noticed… playing this game has strengthened up my baby finger no end. It was always the runt of my fingers and even when I played normal guitar with it, it never really did what I wanted to when I wanted it to. Now, it’s kicking my other fingers’ asses. So, bonus!
This isn’t supposed to be out for another week or so. During the week, I was whinging that it had the same release date as the new Tomb Raider game. But hooray for Smyths, breaking the release date and selling Guitar Hero early.
Now I’m waking up at 9am on a Sunday morning just so I can rock out to Megadeth’s Symphony of Destruction.
Much as I love “survival horror” games, I have genuine trouble playing them. I like to think this is because I become so engrossed in the game and commit myself to it so completely that the scares are extremely effective on me. But others might say that it’s because I’m a complete pussy. I’ll let you decide which theory you want to subscribe to. When my girlfriend announced that she’d had enough of the “cutesy” games I’d been pushing on her (the risible “Hello Kitty” game being the proverbial straw) and wanted to try something meatier, I realised it was time to bit the bullet and bring out Silent Hill 2, a game that had been lying untouched since I bought it almost two years ago. The idea being that she would play most of the game, handing (read: throwing) the controller to me whenever the action got a bit much for her.
Throughout the course of the game, you realise how much the game loves to fuck with you. It’s true that most survival horror games like to fuck with you in some way - the cheap-but-fun parlour tricks of “Eternal Darkness” making you think your controller had become unplugged, or the twisted self-referential jokes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 - but Silent Hill turns this into an art form. The static on your character’s hand-held radio being a particularly good example. It warns the player that an enemy is close, but doesn’t give any indication of exactly where it is. And there’s only one thing scarier than something you can’t see: something you can’t see, but know is there.
By the middle of Silent Hill 2, you’ll have collected most weapons and found plenty of ammunition for your arsenal. Even on “normal” difficulty, the enemies aren’t particularly troublesome. The ones you can’t kill are easy to avoid. At this stage, even my girlfriend was taunting the enemies. I’m pretty sure I heard her smack-talking Pyramid Head.
And that’s when the game pounces.
Inside a hotel, you come across a lift. You have to go down a couple of floors and pick up some items. Unfortunately, when you step into the lift (the only way down), an alarm goes off. A helpful sign informs you that the lift, in true videogame logic, has a weight limit of exactly one person. I spent five minutes shouting at the TV. “You sneaky fuckers! There’s someone else in the lift with me! Someone on the roof! Someone I can’t see!? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?!!” Eventually, I discovered what it wanted me to do: my inventory was weighing me down, so I’d have to dump all of my guns and ammunition and go in unarmed. It wouldn’t even let me carry a stick to club potential enemies with.
And with that, my shouting went up a notch. I paused the game and shrieked at the TV for a good ten minutes. I knew that I would be in a cramped basement filled with the worst kinds of brain-spew this side of a Francis Bacon painting (see what I did there?). And I would be completely defenceless. In the end, I spent more time bitching and moaning about what I had to do than I spent actually doing it, but that’s entirely beside the point.
Not long after the game was finished, myself and my girlfriend went on a late-night tour of Kilmainham Jail, a special one-off tour as part of heritage week, given by a friend of ours. It was all about execution within the jail, taking us through some of the places not shown on the “normal” tour. I don’t think anyone was as freaked out as us - the whole thing was exactly like something out of Silent Hill, right down to the creepy map on the wall.
So now, if anyone asks me if Silent Hill 2 is a good game, I tell them about walking through Kilmainham Jail, constantly checking over my shoulder for zombie nurses. It takes a truly spectacular game to mess you up long after the computer is turned off.
God of War was, hands down, my favourite game of last year. Epic brutality. So glad to see they’re bringing it back for a sequel, and adding the bits they couldn’t get to in the original (like a battle with the cyclops)
Another fascinating thread on Archiseek about the tunnels hidden around Dublin city. Not exactly enough for serious Urban Exploration, but still pretty interesting.
Fascinating thread on Archiseek about cycling in Irish cities. As a cyclist in Dublin, I can safely say I have stared into the face of death on many occasions. Interesting to see what city planners think of all this.
johnke.me
