Friday, June 6, 2008

Lego Indiana Jones and the Quest for Attainable Achievements

Funny thing happened yesterday. My copy of Lego Indiana Jones arrived via Gamefly, and even though I had a million things to do, I felt compelled to pop it in and check it out. About 30 minutes later, I'd unlocked 2 or 3 Achievements, and I suddenly realized it had been at least a week since I'd heard that sound or remembered what that felt like.

See, ever since I finished the story in GTA4, I'd sorta been half-heartedly trying to get to 100%, but it's a time-consuming process even if you are giving it your all, and I've got a long ways to go on pretty much everything I need to do. So aside from finally figuring out what I was doing wrong on the "Fly the helicopter under the bridges" Achievement, and somehow beating the CUBED high score, it had been many, many hours since I'd unlocked any Achievements. Add to that my time spent on my PS3 - Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds is pretty addictive, and I also decided to download Crash Bandicoot 2, just because - and you can see why getting a little over 100 points in just over an hour in LIJ would feel like a shock to the system.

As for LIJ itself: I gotta say, I'm really enjoying it so far, maybe even more than the Star Wars games. Maybe it's because I've always secretly liked the IJ movies more than the SW movies; maybe it's because I think the puzzles are better, and are a more natural fit with the source material; maybe it's because watching Lego Indiana drop kick a "Nazi" is always endearing and awesome. The humor is just as spot-on as it's ever been in this series, but they also do a pretty great job with the platforming (such as it is) - there are moments where this kinda feels like a Tomb Raider game, which is great considering what Tomb Raider games are emulating in the first place.

My rented copies of Ninja Gaiden 2 and GRID should be arriving any day now, and I must admit I'm not really looking forward to either of them. The previous Ninja Gaiden game utterly broke my spirit, and everyone's saying that the camera in NG2 is even worse than the first one. And the word about GRID - about how the 360 version suffers from freezing - is very disappointing, as I am a huge fan of DIRT and was really looking forward to this (although, of course, since I haven't actually played it yet, I have no idea how bad the problem is, or if it even exists at all).

And then MGS4 arrives next week. I've set up my Gamefly queue so there's no reason why I shouldn't get a copy immediately; and yet I kinda don't give a shit. I'm playing it because as a PS3 owner I feel obligated to play it, and so that I'll be adequately prepared when the first wave of discussion hits the 'tubes, but... as soon as I hit a cutscene that goes past 10 minutes and I lose track of whatever the fuck is supposed to be going on, I'm gonna sink back into my couch and wonder why I let myself get talked into something I knew I wasn't going to enjoy.

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