| 22/4/2010 You may have noticed another addition to my stories? While I'm unwilling to work on full-on novels (at the moment) I realised that I can't just let my creative writing die, so I was one day "hit by a plot-bunny" (as Eleanor described it) and wrote a short story while waiting at the airport and on the plane to and from Zürich. That would be my first ever fanfic. Funny thing is, I've been reading quite a few fan-written video game novelisations so I'm kind of itching to do some fanfics of my own. I just have to order them. In the meantime, my mind's on video games (what else?). With no big PS3 releases coming out for a while I've dived into some retro games. I downloaded Abe's Oddysee recently, haven't played it yet but the reason I downloaded it was because I never bought the game, despite how unique it is. I have been playing Crash Bandicoot. The first one. I still have my copy of Crash 3 but Crash 1 I traded in years ago, so I downloaded it off the PSN out of nostalgia. This week saw the first time I played that game in over 11 years. It still holds up quite well. While the graphics are very PS1 (and somewhat primitive) they're not ugly, unfortunately the lower framerate shows up on my HD screen, which means that when Crash is moving the scenery blurs. It hurts my eyes after a while. Also, the depth perception is all weird, I really had to learn to get used to that again. I also found myself making a list of why Crash Bandicoot is so hard. While it's mostly a legitimately challenging game there's also quite a bit of unfairness and idiocy in it. For instance, only in the first installment do we find Crash walking along platforms in the middle of the air, he falls off them surprisingly easily. It's also only in the first installment that the ridiculous save system is used. Instead of having the option to save between levels at the map (like later franchise entries) you have to get to the end of a bonus level in order to save. And it only saves your stats (like what level you're on and such) so if you either die and choose to continue or load up a game you start off with 4 lives 0 wumpa fruit from the level you saved on. Doesn't matter if you left the game with 22 lives and 4 levels ahead. The other way of saving is if you play through an earlier level and get the box gem for finding every box, but that's not necessarily easy. I can see why I took ages to get through the game when I was young. That is a funny thing to observe about myself. Maturity and years of playing Crash Bandicoot games means that unlike in my younger life, in this week I got to the third island in 3 days. I also have one more thing to add. I downloaded Flower, which I had originally intended to buy when I first got the PS3 (but then I had Bomberman Ultra and Wipeout HD to tinker with). It's the perfect bedtime game, I promise you. I'll say more about it later. |