Earthworm Jim arrives on the XBox 360 with enhanced graphics and extra play modes. After all of these years, how does the 16-bit platformer hold up? The Local Ditch finds out.
Oh, Xbox Live, how you’ve enabled me to relive the missed games of my youth. Welcome to the club, Earthworm Jim. Back in the 16-bit days, I had EJ2 for my Genesis, but never the first one.
So, how do I view it with modern day eyes? I really had to step back and get in the right mindset to play this one. I’ve grown accustomed to the auto-saves and constant progress of modern games. It’s a bit of a blast from the past to go into a game that’s designed to last for a few hours and be played from the very beginning every time that it’s started. (more…)
Another trek down missed memory lane via XBOX Live gives me the chance to finally put some time into Perfect Dark. Do the high resolution graphics make up for the antiquated game structure?
Another trek down missed memory lane via XBOX Live gives me the chance to finally put some time into Perfect Dark. Sure, I think I’d played it before with friends at one point or another, usually ending with me swearing profusely about getting my ass kicked in the multiplayer.
But now, this digital remastering of Perfect Dark gives me a chance to prove that had I actually properly put time into the game, I wouldn’t be so rubbish at it. No, I don’t believe what I just said either. (more…)
Dead Space, the 2008, third-person, sci-fi shooter, is a solid contribution its genre, but it continually reminds me of other games.
Hey, wasn’t Dead Space 2 released just a few days ago? When I finally got a hold of an XBOX over the summer, I had to get a couple of games. Those were Burnout Paradise and Dead Space. In hindsight, I’m not really sure why I chose them. I think a large part of it was that I wanted to experience what the PS3/360 generation had brought to the gaming world.
So, I started Dead Space and I couldn’t read a goddamn thing on the screen. (more…)
In the world of plastic instrument games, there’s Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero V, Band Hero, DJ Hero, and of course, the Rock Band series. The Local Ditch takes a look at what is special about Rock Band 2.
Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero 2, Guitar Hero 3… Rock Band. RB was the game changer in the rhythm genre. Drums, vocals, guitars, bass – it was all here in one package.
I didn’t play Rock Band. I was late to the party. Instead, I had just been exposed to the plastic instrument craze via Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock for the PS2. Yes, 2007 was a big year for me, finally getting a PS2 and jumping, or so I felt, into the modern world of games. (more…)
Ever get the urge to just shoot the shit out of over-the-top, cell-shaded rednecks in a post-apocalyptic world? Then Borderlands is the game for you.
Borderlands – Time killer of the year? Possibly. The stat-based desert shooter first captured my attention with its art style. Then, the winter bombardment started. Much like the rest of the world, I’d seen too many holiday commercials showcasing the game’s psychotic inhabitants while blaring Cage the Elephant in the background. Regardless, I was still interested. The Steam sale, however, was what finally pushed me over the edge. (more…)
While most sites are putting together their ‘Top Ten of 2010’ lists, I’ve run into a problem. I didn’t manage to play 10 games that were released in 2010. So instead, here’s a quick rundown on what I did play.
Oh 2010, how we hardly knew ye. It’s the time of year to look back and reflect, to remember and revisit all of the great accomplishments and achievements of twenty ten, to peruse past time and celebrate it.
Or it would have been a month ago.
Typical for the course, The Local Ditch is fashionably late to the party, although less so than usual. While other sites are running down their favorite releases of 2010, I’ve run into a problem. I didn’t actually play that many games that were actually released in the past year. What to do? Why, of course, ramble on about the games that I did play.
So, over the next few days, I’m going to throw up a quick post about what I’ve played. Guess what? It wasn’t a whole bunch of Interstate ’76.
The Local Ditch Update: The Features section is finally open and the first game is 1994’s classic: System Shock.
I’ve posted the first game in the “Features” series: System Shock. As with the new Deus Ex page, it’s a bit of a review and retrospective all wrapped into one. Go check it out.
In very-related news, the Features link at the top of the page now goes somewhere. It’s serves as in intro to the features section, but it’s really a manifesto, listing all that I’m trying to accomplish with them. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to accomplish much.
As expected, there’s been a few parts of the site that broke with the new look, most notably every page that linked to the home page. Nothing spells fun like breaking links on hundreds and hundreds of pages. Good news: that should be fixed. More good news: the Q&A has been updated. I know, I […]
As expected, there’s been a few parts of the site that broke with the new look, most notably every page that linked to the home page. Nothing spells fun like breaking links on hundreds and hundreds of pages. Good news: that should be fixed.
More good news: the Q&A has been updated. I know, I know… sending a message to me is like a game of roulette: there’s no guarantee what’ll happen. Will your question be answered in the next few days? Months? Years? If you sent a message recently, it’s answered. If you sent one back in February, I apologize for the horrible response time, but it’s answered, too.
Activision’s I ’76 Wallpaper has been added to the site, thanks to a generous visitor.
The Deus Ex page has been updated with a new look and more info. Really, more than anything else, it’s just a ramble about my experiences with the game, plus all of the old info.
The “Features” section is going to be very similar to this – more of a review/retrospective on a particular game rather than a ton of stats, files, cheats, etc.
Lastly, the search box is up and working well. Prior to this, it was working (mostly) from the news page, but not too well anywhere else.
Updates:
Q&A – More questions, more answers
Interstate ’76 Downloads – Wallpaper available
Deus Ex – Better looking with actual content
Once again, there’s a new look to the site – a little refresh that’ll hopefully make reading and navigating the front page a tad easier. To the side are some quick headlines with recent news about some of gaming series covered here. The games can be found at the top, as usual. There’s a comments […]
Once again, there’s a new look to the site – a little refresh that’ll hopefully make reading and navigating the front page a tad easier.
To the side are some quick headlines with recent news about some of gaming series covered here. The games can be found at the top, as usual. There’s a comments section now, which’ll add another way to interact with the site. That is, if my 6-month late responses to the Q&A section weren’t enough.
I’m sure there are a few bugs that need to be ironed out, so expect to see a little tweaking and refinement over the next while. I’m hoping to do a new “Features” section for the site where some of the legendary games of the past and near-past are covered. I’ve got a little bit written (from as much as a year ago, actually), but hopefully it’ll be up shortly.
After all of the hubaloo about Tripd.co.uk going down, another major player in the free homepage market is coming to an end. Geocities, one of the first homepage providers has announced that they are no longer accepting sign-ups and will be shutting down by the endof the year. Long time visitors (are there any?) will […]
After all of the hubaloo about Tripd.co.uk going down, another major player in the free homepage market is coming to an end. Geocities, one of the first homepage providers has announced that they are no longer accepting sign-ups and will be shutting down by the endof the year.
Long time visitors (are there any?) will know that this site started off at Geocities, back in 1997. At the time, they had a different approach to to website categorization – that of neighborhoods. So, all of the sites about games would go in the TimesSquare/Arcade neighborhood. After that, everyone had a number (7891 for me), much like your homepage was an apartment on the block. You could browse sites by streets and addresses and check out your virtual “neighbors.”
Perhaps it wasn’t the most useful way to organize sites, but it was an interesting interpretation of how these homepages should be structured and really showed off some of the early unique approaches to the internet at the time.
Eventually, Geocities succumbed to an overload of ads and pop-up banners and was bought out by Yahoo!. The old neighborhood categorization was gone and instead replaced with the more standard geocities.com/username approach.
Most people, however, seem to know the place as a location for horrible web design with pages that say little more than “Welcome to my corner of the internet. Here is a list of my favorite links.” Maybe time hasn’t been so kind to the site, but I’ll have fond memories of the place, figuring out this whole html thing and looking at the random homepages of my geo-neighbors.
In other news, the I ’76 FAQ has been reordered and had some parts rewritten, just to explain things in a tad more detail and offer clearer solutions.
Updates:
Interstate ’76 FAQ – Reworded and reordered
Local Ditch Gaming