Mondaily Update

This weekend was a bit all over the place in terms of gaming. I didn't put the solid hours into Bionic Commando: Rearmed that I had planned so, while progress was made, I didn't get as far as I would have liked. I feel like I did make it past the tipping point as I completed another 3 stages in fairly rapid succession but I'm now stuck on one stage. I don't think it will be a problem for that long it's just that I didn't get to dedicate a huge chuck of time to finding strategies and working through it logically. I'm still hopeful that I will get through the rest of this game quickly, with only the last level being the only major hurdle in my way still. We'll see how that goes when I get to it.


I continued BloodForge boosting off and on over the last couple of days, dedicating a chunk of Sunday to finishing it up. Big thanks to Beast Incarnate for sticking with me through all my internet problems. I'm not sure if it was just the game or my internet or something else but searching for challenge updates seemed to take longer and longer and by the end of our boost it was trying to pull data from the servers for over 5 minutes before it would get anything. This must have fucked something up somewhere as the challenges started to become glitchy, with killing the last enemy in a wave not triggering the start of the next one multiple times. I ended up replaying waves multiple times while I'm sure Beast was sitting there wondering if I even knew how to play the game because of how long it was taking.

Sepia toned violence

Eventually it was obvious something had messed up somewhere between the servers and I with my screen becoming flooded with dummy challenges, all from Beast - even though BloodForge only lets you have one active challenge between any two people at a time. I had to click on each one, sit through 5 minutes of it contacting the server only to find myself dumped back at the main menu because that challenge obviously didn't really exist. It was beginning to get frustrating but I knew I only need one or two more to complete BloodForge so after some determination the last achievement was mine.

After finishing BloodForge I found myself in the Avatar Awards section of the dashboard. I'm not really sure what made me go peeping around in there but I discovered I hadn't unlocked all the awards in a couple of XBLA games I had recently finished. I saw that there was an award I missed in Crazy Taxi, which required me to play the game for 10 hours. Not being the biggest Crazy Taxi fan I decided to just grind it out by letting it idle in 10 minute Arcade mode. I knew this would take a while with minimum input from me, seeing as I unlocked the award for playing the game for 5 hours shortly before being finished with the game, so I went looking for something I could do to occupy my time.

Evoland evolves and adds new gameplay and graphics as the RPG progresses

This led to me looking at and enjoying Evoland. My computer is right next to my Xbox so I could reach over every 10 minutes to restart Crazy Taxi while I was playing. Evoland is a PC game that chronicles the progression of the RPG genre. As you get chests you gain abilities and new gameplay options, updated graphics, RPG tropes and more. It's a fun run through of RPG's as they evolved and as someone who has seen them as they did it was cool to experience it all in one game. It's fairly short and I'm just about finished with it but it was a great distraction while grinding Crazy Taxi and a great game to just play and experience yourself.

That's it for this weekend. I managed to squeeze in a couple more levels of iStunt 2. Slowly progressing there as well. I guess the theme for this weekend was slow progress but progress is indeed progress. Thank's for reading, leave a comment if you'd like and I'll be back Wednesday.

Crazy Taxi XBLA Review

This would have been a lot of fun!

Crazy Taxi is a game meant to be played in small spurts. This is understandable as Crazy Taxi was originally an arcade fixture, and a very popular one at that. In that situation it's popularity is understandable, with it's frantic gameplay and a time limit that bares down on you incessantly, you want to do the best you can and squeeze the most game out of your dollar. It's only when you have unlimited access you realise that after playing it a couple of times there's not really much else on offer.

Crazy Taxi is a one trick pony, and if you have nostalgic memories about your time with it then one trick will be all Crazy Taxi needs. As someone who didn't really have any arcades around where I grew up, that lone trick fell flat after a while. Personally I don't see any fun in battling for high-scores and as such Crazy Taxi may not necessarily be the game for me, but on a certain level I did have quite a bit of brainless fun driving around the two maps for a while.

Overview

Axel, Gena, Gus & B.D. Joe

You play as one of four drivers who tear around a city trying to bring as many people to their destination as possible. Upon first glance the game is really simple but high-score success involves a handful of more advanced techniques involving gear shifts and break/accelerator timing. If you tried any of these techniques in a real car you'd literally blow your gearbox clear out the bottom of your ride. If you one of our four protagonists however your taxi only has to last a maximum of around 10 minutes anyway so go for it!

There's some slight strategy in fare selection with the different passengers having different coloured halos around them depending on how far they want to go. Every fare is a stone cold adrenaline junkie with no regard for their own safety, with them all offering you extra tips for narrowly missing cars and flying off huge jumps. When your destination is in sight, slap your cab into reverse and break at the same time for maximum stopping power, or just slam into the nearest wall and collect your fare before hunting down a new passenger and doing it all again. Whatever your fares end up totaling is your score when the time is up and you also get a license rank based on how well you did.

Hurry up and get in, can't you see my timer is running down!

Rational
The above two paragraphs explain the entirety of the main game. There are three different modes to play in, two of which are the same except that they take place on different maps. This offers a slight challenge as you learn the city over again but just like any good cabbie you'll get the city down soon enough, find the shortcuts that work for you and just go about your business again. The third option offers up something new in the form of a series of short challenges or mini-game style missions that require you to do all manner of things.

Crazy Drifting for Strikes

These challenges can be really difficult and require almost perfect control over the more advanced driving techniques that the main game doesn't every really require. In fact I had completed the entirety of both the other modes, collecting all available achievements without even knowing that there were any advanced techniques to use. As I worked my way through the challenges I slowly mastered the Crazy Drift, Boost and Brake, while these save time it seemed like the amount in most cases was almost negligible.

Some of the challenges wanted you to use certain techniques to make it through but I found I had an easier time and managed a few without the use of the technique they were trying to show. The later challenges however are very difficult and push the use of these techniques to the limit of your control. I only managed to finish a couple with milliseconds to spare. These challenges offer some variety to an otherwise basic game but they are mostly short lived and no where near as much fun as the previous two modes.

50 cents for risking both our lives? Seems legit.

Summary
Crazy Taxi is fun to play in short spurts. While charging through it all in one sitting like me may be the most efficient you'll be done with the game in one afternoon. All the achievements are easily attainable with only a couple of the harder challenge related ones providing some decent resistance. I would have to only recommend this game to people seeking spurts of fun, maybe pass and play while hanging out. If you're looking for something to just sit down and play by yourself, and you have no nostalgic attachment to the brand, you'll find yourself looking for something else after half an hour.

Passenger and pedestrian safety is out #1 priority!

Mondaily Update

Hey all, today just seems to have gotten away from me. It's 10:30 pm as I write this and it seems like I haven't been able to find any time to play and Xbox or write this post since I woke up. This will have to be a quick one as I would like to squeeze in some Xbox and whatever else I find interesting on the web tonight.

Some of the challenges are quite Crazy! Ha!

Friday I talked about having just started Crazy Taxi and how quick and easy most of the achievements were. Well I managed to finish off the remaining 3 achievements after writing that entry with the help of some good Youtube videos. Someone a lot better then I swanned through the challenges like they were nothing, but after watching them I ended up beating them aswell, although with quite a bit more effort and profanities. Crazy Taxi was an enjoyable ride and a quick, although not exactly easy, 200 points. Look for a review sometime in the future.

After Crazy Taxi I found myself looking at True Achievements, an awesome site by the way, give it a look here, and noticed a friend asking if anyone wanted to do any Co-op in Iron Brigade. I had been wanting to start the game but had been putting it off due to the co-operative achievements so this seemed like the perfect chance to give it a whirl. I've played a whole bunch of it and it's really enjoyable and quite the challenge. I did a whole lot of co-opin and a lot by myself. Right now I'm working my way through the DLC, Rise of the Martian Bear, which takes the Mobile Trench Division straight to Mars.

Iron Brigade is fun and funny!

Apart from that I squeezed in a couple more iStunt 2 levels in some down time I had, and watched a couple of movies over the weekend. The first being Iron Man 3, which was quite good. I really enjoyed the first Iron Man but the second was very average I thought, so I didn't know what to expect. They really turned it back around with this movie, but not being much of a comic book fan I dunno what they would think about how the Mandarin was portrayed. I won't say much else, as it is still new and don't want to spoil anything. I know this is not a movie blog, but I also ended up watching Paranormal Activity 4, which was quite disappointing. Even not being the biggest fan of the series, this one seemed lazy and added nothing new or exciting. The Xbox 360 and Kinect do make an appearance. Did you know the Kinect can track ghosts?

That's all for today, time to squeeze in some gaming. Leave a comment and come back tomorrow for the long awaited review of Deep Black. I got a few reviews on the back burner now, so there will definitely be new content for a while. See you then.

Fridaily Update

Hope all my fellow Australians had a great ANZAC Day, I know I sure made good use of my time. I managed to finish up two games and most of a third I started last night.

Serious Sam: The First Encounter was the first to be wrapped up nicely with the help of a friend who knew exactly what he was doing. We made it through in record time with explosions and flowers flying everywhere. Flowers because I had Hippie blood turned on as the achievement Co-op Hippie asks you to complete the last stage with it, it was a colourful change after the three other solo runs I did with normal blood. Co-op was a blast and super easy as you can die as much as you want and constantly spawn back in exactly where you left off. Completing the campaign in co-op took just under two hours and resulted in the three achievements I needed to complete Serious Sam: TFE. It was a great start to the day.

Red Dead Redemption rides off into the sunset that is my DVD shelf

Next I couldn't really decide what I wanted to play next, and saw Red Dead Redemption was still sitting in my disc drive so instead of wasting time I thought why not just grind out some more levels for a while. I ended up doing that for most of the day but in the end I reached level 50 and passed into legend, sacrificing my rank for the last achievement I needed. It was a bitter sweet moment as I deleted the RDR install and DLC expansions from my hard drive, I was happy I had finally completed it but also sad as now I probably won't play any Red Dead Redemption for a long, long time.


Red Dead Redemption is up there as one of my favourite games I've ever played on the Xbox. Before deleting it I spent some more time in single player, roaming the country side and unlocking the last two outfits I needed by playing a whole bunch of Five-Finger Fillet, roaming around for ages looking for snakes to kill and skin and killing a cougar with a stick of dynamite amongst other things. After getting the Savvy Merchant and Expert Hunter outfits there was nothing more to do in my game and multiplayer, while fun, isn't what I really liked about RDR, so it has now retired from my Xbox almost a whole three years since I first played it.

After looking through my XBLA list one more time I decided on giving Crazy Taxi a whirl. It's been a bunch of stupid fun so far and I've managed to grab all the Arcade and Original mode achievements which leaves me with the Crazy Box. Crazy Box is a set of challenge missions that are a lot harder than any of the fares you drive around in the actual game, so this could end up becoming quite the challenge. I'm gonna see if I can wrap it up today, and get another completion under my belt this week.

That's all for this update, two more completed games to review, along with Deep Black, so look for those reviews in the upcoming weeks. As always leave a comment, and I'll be back Monday.