Guardian of Light – Leaderboards

Finished Lara Croft: Guardian of Light this afternoon (it’s savage). While I don’t really have the time or patience to go through all the levels getting all the extra items and completing all the challenges, it’s quite fun to run through the odd one with my end-game, ridiculously powerful, Lara.

Case in point was one of the earliest levels (4), where you’ve to kill a T-Rex in a make-him-run-on-to-platforms-then-trigger-the-spikes fashion.

Hmm, wonder how fast I can run through this level…wonder if this stupidly powerful weapon will kill him…holy shit!

So my first run through put me around 150 on the global time leaderboard (of ~17000).

Woah, how far can I push this?

47th

Hmm.

13th

Top 10 and I’ll be happy.

6th

One totally clean run and I’ll be happy.

3rd

SOLD!

I assume it won’t last long, but I’ve got my ten seconds (7.243s!).

Should really do a post on Limbo and Guardian of Light… Maybe.

E3 10 – Nintendo Press Conference

The Awesome
Showing a shitload of “core” games (not bothered by most, but respect for them after last year’s disaster)
3DS reveal (regardless of it actually being good, it’s a nice bit of new hardware)
No Cammie
Very little casual shit
JUST DANCE 2 HOLY FUCK (UNREEEEEEEAL)

The Good
New Zelda (I got a distinctly casual feel from it)
Strong third party support for 3DS (Konami, Capcom, etc)
Kirby Epic Yarn (love the art style)
Warren Spector

The meh
All of the core games apart from those mentioned above
Goldeneye (woo, cash-in!)

The Bad
New Zelda’s controls (so bad to be embarrassing – one section simply didn’t work)
Reggie lying by implication (combatted rumours of slowing Wii sales by stating Wii had one month of excellent sales; rumours of people not buying Wii software by saying it had the largest software sales of any console, but didn’t mention attach rate)

A- (while most of the stuff mightn’t really appeal to me, respect to Nintendo for giving core gamers something to be happy about)

E3 10 – Sony Press Conference

The Good
Jack Tretton (he’s great!)
Kevin Butler (LEGEND)
Move dated (EU before NA? Yay!)
Gran Turismo 5 dated (would’ve been hell to pay if it wasn’t)
Tiger Woods 11 w/Move (wouldn’t mind playing me some of that!)
Sorcery (I’m intrigued)
LBP2 (I like)

The Meh
Killzone 3 (it does look nice, but it’s hard to get excited about)
PSN+ (not bothered)
PS3 exclusive content (not enough to make me switch from 360!)
3D tech (nice, but I’m not paying for a 3DTV!)
Third party stuff (seen all this already…)

The Annoying
Announcing games through trailer montages (Singstar Dance, Patapon 3)

The Bad
FUCKING HEAP OF SHIT INTERNET CUT OUT IN GABE’S BIT
No Last Guardian
No Agent
No Team Ico HD Collection
Alex Evans (Media Molecule) not swearing

B+ (no megatons)

E3 10 – Microsoft Press Conference

As my internet is the biggest heap of shit ever (meant to be a 2mb line, I’m happy to get anything over 50k/sec), I was resigned to watching this in jerky 4:3 lowres on Ustream. But it did work, so not too bad.

The Awesome
Xbox 360 Slim shipping today?! For same price?! One for everyone in audience?!

The Good
Gears of War 3 (I was skeptical, but the demo looked great)
Fable III – October 26
360 voice control/Kinect control

The Curious
Metal Gear Rising (Red Steel 2?)
Crytek exclusive IP (“Kingdoms”)
YourShape (fuck off casual, but I was intrigued)
Dance Central (likewise, but it probably wouldn’t have the right CHOONZ)
No Kinect pricing
Forza Kinect (I’m thinking it’ll be a bunch of minigames)

The Meh
Halo: Reach (space combat? Hmm)
All the Microsoft-developed Kinect games

The Bad
Scripted banter (“LOOK HOW MUCH FUN WE’RE HAVING AND WE DON’T NORMALLY PLAY GAMES!”)
The guy presenting Kinect (“I AM VERY LOUD. I MUST WEAR SUNGLASSES INDOORS TO CONTAIN MY AWESOMENESS. DID I MENTION I WAS LOUD?”)
Not one hardcore game announcement (but in fairness, it was all Kinect/casual focus, and all the big devs have got launches coming up)
The Star Wars Kinect game (looks like an on-rails Wii game, and I’m not a Star Wars nerd or anything, but what’re late-model stormtroopers, tanks and droids from the Separatists AND Darth Vader all doing on Naboo? Hmmm)

B- (saved, without doubt, by the shipping-today 360 Slim)

IT’S A NEW RECORD

So I turned on my first-gen MacBook for the first time in a long time today (it’s been without a charger since Christmas).

First thing I do:

That’s June 8 last year.

It’s survived reasonably well – the space, n, h, y, 6 and numlock keys have stopped working (they’re all in a line too…) and the fan still runs ridiculously (my Pro is idling at a higher temperature, and is silent), but otherwise it’s in good shape. Not sure if the cost to repair’ll be worth the return though…