Games games games

So I've finally had some time to myself this weekend, with no large items of furniture to transport, no major moving in worries and a full set of utilities at last. Being free, finally, to get out of the house and do whatever I wanted, naturally I've spent quite a large portion of the weekend inside, playing games and making the most of my dirt cheap Xbox Live subscription - thank you Employee Purchase ;)

1. Guitar Hero | Greatest Hits (PS2 homebrew)
Lee Harris, the guy who beat me at that Guitar Hero competition in Birmingham has put a hell of a lot of work into two homebrew disks of Guitar Hero, each stuffed with custom-made tracks and mappings, both of which are labelled 'expert only'. This is pretty strictly enforced, with all other difficulty settings locked off, and the game defaulting to 'hyperspeed' mode (the hyperspeed cheat now unlocks 'megaspeed' - 4x normal rate, ouch!).

Along with all of the new tracks (some great, some less so, some well synched, some...not) he's also edited a lot of the loading menus et cetera, which is simply hilarious at times. I especially like what he's replaced the default 'gig expenses' such as 'Microphones, broken' and 'Dressing room, trashed' with ;) Oh, and 'In soviet Russia, hero guitars you" was pretty win too.

Getting the front panel off my PS2 and then getting the hang of the SwapMagic tool took so I could play this homebrew game took me some time, but was definitely worth it - and I can now play Katarmari Damacy, when I get my hands on it! Whoop.

On the downside, I did, rather retardedly, manage to overwrite all of my saved data for the original Guitar Hero II, but as I'm getting that for XBox tomorrow anyway, and all my scores are up on Scorehero, so I'm not too upset.

2. Dead Rising
On the front of the box we're clearly told that this game is not endorsed, licensed or influenced by Dawn Of The Dead. It feels odd that they somehow feel the need to state that, because a photographer being airlifted to the top of a zombie infested mall feels in no way like a ripoff of the film.

Note however, that I'm not complaining that this is (and it is) a game version of that utterly awesome film, because that's the very reason I love it. There's little more satisfying than walking up to a door and seeing it blocked by a host of zombies, and then noticing the lawnmower the game designers have placed thoughtfully just to the side of the door. Oh yeah.

The photography element of the game does give it something a bit more than just pure gore, and I'll admit I'm intrigued as to when I get Prestige Points for taking photos of the genre 'Erotica', but it feels a bit stilted and pointless to be honest. People don't play zombie games to show off their digital photography skills.

The game's pretty hard too, I've currently been dying before reaching the save point, possibly because I decide to take on a few of the missions first. Think State of Emergency with a bit more of a plotline, slightly better dialogue and a lot more zombies. Also it's not shit like State of Emergency was.

One note of annoyance though - when you're grappled by a zombie, you must quickly wiggle the left analogue stick from side to side to escape. This isn't mentioned in the manual however, so the first time you find out about this control is when you first get grappled. Unfortunately, the tutorial tip that tells you this scrolls so slowly from the right of the screen that by the time you've read it, you're dead. Grrr.

3. Viva Piñata
I was up at 9am today to play what is, to the casual observer, a children's game, and I got so addicted that I didn't manage to drag myself away until I noticed it was long past lunchtime. This game is absolutely brilliant, and you find yourself getting extremely disturbingly immersed in a word of paper animals stuffed with sweets.

When I say this is only apparently a game designed for kids, I'm not implying that it has intensely difficult strategies (though you do have to be on your toes to keep up with the million and one things happening) - I'm pointing out that it should be rated 18 at least for all of the adult themes contained in the game.

For example, mating. This is given a very fairytale spin in the game, with two animals, once certain conditions have been met, running together, having a hug, playing a minigame and then getting an egg delivered by Storkos. You watch this the first time and think 'how cute'. Then, accidentally, you click on the child they've created, and then on the mother, and watch an act of incest take place. Later on, you click on the same animal and the father, and watch some homosexual incest result in...yet another baby. What are kids supposed to deduce from this?

Then you've got violence and cannibalism - these guys don't just start fights for no reason, but when they've won, one of two things happens. Either, the winner rips open the loser's body and gorges on their intestines, or the devil comes along and bears the soul of the loser off to a dark hell for all eternity. Either way, I can see a hell of a lot of kids getting nightmares here.