My Extra Life Experience

As you probably know by now, Extra Life happened last weekend, and I took part. I raised $242 for the Children’s Hospital for Wales this year. Not massively impressive I know, but I’m glad I helped out and did my bit.

So what’s it like playing games for 24 hours straight? Sounds easy on the surface, but it can be a lot harder than you would think. Last year, everyone was ill in my house, so staying up for so long was a big challenge. This time, with nobody being ill I was hoping it would be a lot easier. It was in parts, but the last couple of hours got pretty tough.

Pancakes And Football

We started the day with some lovely pancakes, bananas and maple syrup, and then moved quickly on to the best game at this year’s Eurogamer Expo. Battlefield 3? Skyrim? No, I‘m talking about Sensible World of Soccer of course. While browsing the Retro Arcade section at Eurogamer, my friends and I found a copy of Sensible Soccer running on an Amiga. We spent half an hour playing it on the first day, and returned for a game or two on both Saturday and Sunday. The first thing we did when we returned from London was download it from XBLA. I’m not a fan of sports games, but I can make an exception with Sensible Soccer.

Thinking With Portals

When Italy kicked Spain’s ass a couple of times in a row, we decided to play some Portal 2. I don’t know why it has taken so long for us to get around to playing through the cooperative story, but I’m glad we finally have done. Having four portals to think about creates some interesting puzzles that are nice and satisfying to figure out. The cut scene after completing the free DLC is brilliant, and I urge you to go play it if you haven’t done already.

At this point I had a little break to check how one of my housemates was getting on with Dead Island. I found him lying asleep on his bed, controller still in his hands. It had only been four hours! How do you expect to last for the other 20 if you’re falling asleep already?

Cooperative Backstabbing

After a quick lunch break, we sat down to some four-player Zelda: Four Swords. I’d played the Gamecube version with four players before, so I was looking forward to trying out the GBA version. It’s a great little game, and for the low price of free on the 3DS, well worth playing. I don’t know what it’s like in single player, but four player is a lot of fun. It’s not a particularly hard game, but if took us a couple of hours to get through it.

This was mainly because of the high amount of backstabbing going on. Somebody would accidentally push another person down a hole, or run ahead and steal the contents of a chest. This then turned into ten minutes of throwing each other down holes, or into the path of an enemy. Eventually we beat the final boss and saved Zelda.

All was well, until we got to the final cut scene, and connection error appeared on all the DS’s. Well, all but the one that had a dead battery and turned itself off. Four Swords doesn’t have the most gripping story, but it would have been nice to have the final cut scene to reward our hard work.

Four Player Insane Arcade Co-op

My plan for tea worked perfectly: prepare a Lancashire hotpot the night before, and chuck it in the oven while playing games. All filled up on delicious hotpot, we decided it was time to get serious and start our four player Gears of War 3 arcade co-op run on insane. Insane is a good description. We made progress, but it was slow and difficult. Thank god for infinite respawns. Four hours in, we had just reached the beginning of Act 3, and everyone was starting to get a little tired. We decided this was a good stopping point, and left Gears for another day.

Stealth And Tired Eyes Don’t Mix

I had played a little Deus Ex: Human Revolution earlier in the day and believed I was close to completing it. I was wrong. Three hours after I started, I was still playing with the end seemingly nowhere in sight. Around 6am, sleepiness started to take over. A little advice for anyone playing Deus Ex, don’t try and play stealthy while falling asleep at your desk. It doesn’t work. I started to just run blindly around corners into guards without thinking about it.

After dying five times in the same area, I started to get frustrated and gave up on stealth altogether. Why bother when I can just walk up to enemies and blow them away with my pimped out shotgun? That worked out pretty well and I finally completed Deus Ex at 7.30am. Just 30 minutes to go.

The Final Countdown

Last year, I spent the final hours of Extra Life playing the first Uncharted, and the plan this year was get around to playing some Uncharted 2. Deus Ex screwed up that a little, but I did spend the last half hour playing it. I have a love/hate relationship with Uncharted. The story, voice acting and animations are great. The platforming and shooting on the other hand are not so great. There are parts that work well, but I’ve failed a load of times because I didn’t jump at precisely the correct angle, or some armoured dude killed me with one shot while I unloaded an entire clip into him.

Anyway, I got through my 30 minute taste of Uncharted 2 and reached my 8am goal. I’d done it! A 24 hour gaming marathon is tiring as hell, but loads of fun. You would think I would be straight in bed and sleeping by 8.05, but I’d gone far past the point of being tired. I ended up staying awake until 9am, and watched this live.

Being a part of that makes it worth all the effort.