The bipolar rollercoaster

That title is just too much cheese, but I couldn’t resist; at the moment I’m up, so cheese shall be in much abundance. Actually it sounds like one of those illness information brochures that litter hospitals and practice waiting-rooms.

In any case, I’m up, but I won’t say that’s a good thing. It isn’t good until it’s consistent and even, which it absolutely is not. I have no idea what each day will bring, or indeed each hour. I sense the medication working to some degree, and while it hasn’t been a cure-all, I shudder to imagine what life would be like without it.

Earth Defence Force is a brilliant game, possibly the most fun I’ve had in the realm of established genres. No keys to collect, no doors to unlock, no NPCs to talk to, no block puzzles, no inventory management, just
– Two weapons (selectable before starting a level)
– Unlimited ammo
– Giant bugs
– Giant robots
– Giant UFOs
– Destructable buildings
and best of all,
– Split-screen Co-op

There are vehicles, but for the most part they’re useless as the developers didn’t do a great job of them, but that’s incidental. This game simply focusses on the one core element that makes FPS/3rd person shooters fun… shooting things. It doesn’t have deep gameplay mechanics, and many of the missions are quite short, but it’s just a blast of fun to play, especially with a friend in co-op.

Elebits on Wii is also getting some play-time, and it’s phenomenal. The comparisons to Katamari are fully justified and well-stated, in that you have a time limit and sometimes other limitations, within which you must find and collect different kinds of tiny Elebits to fulfil a given quota or crietria depending on the level. You collect the Elebits with a ray-gun… which also is capable of picking up objects and moving them. The more Elebits you collect, the greater weight you’re able to levitate.
Insert wanton destruction.
Well, not the same kind of destruction that EDF offers a la 40 storey high office block, but in the levels where you’re not restricted by how many items you can break, you tend to just throw objects with wild abandon in order to find the hiding Elebits. The music in this game is absolutely phenomenal, so much so that Chibi-R and I have ordered the soundtrack which should arrive from Japan any day now, and the art-direction is overflowing with real charm. Game mechanics and the control scheme are also spot-on. It’s always good when you can quickly forget about your inputs and be immersed in the actions and ideologies of a game, truly the marks of outstanding craftsmanship.

Two of the most addictive and engaging games I’ve played to date.

I’m also slowly playing Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War. It’s fun, it’s Ace Combat, so nothing really new there. Once in a while I just like zooming about in a jet, dogfighting and rocketing tanks and buildings.

Yesterday I wasn’t at work because I was thoroughly fucked, my brother was kind enough to take the day off to spend with me, to which end we eventually got to playing EDF co-op in the late afternoon. Last night we also had dinner with Kate, a best friend of ours who is leaving for the UK Monday-week. I’ll see her again next week before she goes, but we wish her all the best for her 6 month to whenever working adventure.

Senko no Ronde for 360 comes out tomorrow, so that will mean I have a total of two games for the console that Microsoft built. I also need to get up off my arse and get on to Xbox Live for a few Live Arcade morsels. The only other game I’m waiting for is Project Sylpheed. Halo 3? Em… maybe. I don’t know – I’m all FPS’d out. I was actually all FPS’d out back in the PC days, but I suppose the Timesplitters and Halo franchises were fun enough to get me back into them. I probably will get Halo 3 for co-op, as I simply adore the dynamics of cooperative play, but I’m not hugely excited about it. There is another serious shooter by Free Radical allegedly coming that will have a 4 player co-op option for the full campaign, but once again, I’m not terribly excited about it either.

It’s funny that Chibi-R and I never wanted 360s until the right Japanese games were released. Aside from the handful mentioned here, I’m absolutely not interested in anything else on offer on the platform. I know everyone’s still excited aboout Gears, but after completing it co-op with my brother in law, I’m more interested in the success of the Unreal 3 Engine and the production costs of Gears as a business model rather than the game itself.

While I am extremely keen to have Little Big Planet, I’m still of the mind that it’s on the wrong console. It’s going to take a whole lot more than one creative game to convince me to buy that overpriced doorstop.

Games, games, games! Viva dexterity!