Category Archives: The Android’s Hockey Riot (Sports/Canada)

The Android's Hockey Riot (Sports/Canada), The Android's Jetpack Augment (Platform), The Android's Thinking Cap (Puzzle)

Trials and Tribulations

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Yesterday I realized it had been released and so purchased Trials Evolution for the 360. I’d played Trials HD at my friend’s house a bit, and had enjoyed it thoroughly but never got around to actually picking it up for myself. With the sequel freshly out of the gate I decided to get on board right away, and it has so far proven to be a wise and judicious purchase.

This video is both http://thehistoryhacker.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90 very loud and very sweary, and it encapsulates the Trials Evolution experience perfectly:

In Trials, your task is, well, time trials. You’re riding a bike and you’ve got to get to the finish line as quickly as possible. Sounds easy enough right? And at first it is. But Trials is an incredibly cunning game that soon ramps up the difficulty to an absolutely insane degree; later tracks are some of the most sadistic things you will ever experience in videogaming. Let me elaborate.

The B button puts you back at the last checkpoint to try again. For a fair portion of the game you’ll only be using this occasionally, the first time through a track to learn it before you go for a decent time. By the end of the game you will be pressing that button several dozens, or hundreds, of times, in order to get through the excruciatingly difficult levels.

This is what this game does to people.

Because of one immensely insidious feature. The game unsurprisingly has global leaderboards, all well and good, but it provides ghosts of your XBL friends and their best times on any given level. And you have absolutely no freaking IDEA how much this impels you to play again, to try that level once more, to get the hang of that jump, because that bastard Barry Manilow has a better time than you and THIS WILL NOT STAND. So you play. And you play again. And again. And again. And again. Until you beat the fucker and you make sure he knows his place. You have never felt so much envious hatred for your friends when they are doing nothing at all and aren’t even around at the time.

It’s brilliant.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Hockey Riot (Sports/Canada), The Android's Universe in a Jar (Sim)

Unexpected games

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We’ve been going for about a year now (Huzzah!) and in that time I’m sure you’ve become familiar with the content of this blog, because said content is eminently predictable (it is a blog about spergy strategy videogames). Still we’ve all got surprises up our sleeves, I am sure. For example, the game I have been playing a lot of this past week?

Football Manager.

Picture: Pike's face when I told her this.

Now I suppose I should clarify that I’m not a Sports Guy. I’ve never been a big fan of sports, and that’s largely because no matter what I try I’ve never been very good at sports. Partly because I’m blind in my left eye, which messes my depth perception right up and means anything like baseball and tennis is right out, and partly because I’m just crap at them anyway, so they never held much interest and I developed my interests in other directions. Yet I got a little bit of an itch, the idea of management like FM provides is… appealing.

I should further clarify that Football Manager is still a game about sperging over spreadsheets, and you could probably say it’s “strategy” inasmuch as you have a bunch of goals (Ha!) and you must concoct and execute long-term plans in order to meet them, all whilst opponents are trying to stop you. Nonetheless there is no arguing that tone and content matter greatly, and this game definitely doesn’t contain the slaying of monsters, nuking of foreigners, or militarily-enforced agglomeration of foreigners into the Glorious Worker’s Republic of Transcascadia. No, this is a game of spherekick (As opposed to handegg). But damned if it’s not compelling! I’ve just come away from a string of defeats and finally yelled at my team, locked them in the locker room after the last game, and then drew up a new formation, new first XI squad, and new training regimen for them. The first game since these changes is just underway and it’s gripping me. More than most games do, even in genres I very publicly adore.

Of course, sports games of the more typical kind have one great strength, which is multiplayer. Great as many games are in that regard few things compare for small-scale, couch competitive gaming, as a game of Virtua Tennis, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, or John Madden. In any event this really detailed side of things is hugely fun, much more than I would have guessed when I caved into a strange hunch and gave it a shot.

Readers, tell us in the comments about any games you’re a fan of that people around you might not expect!