Haven't had any decent game-related chat for a while. As we have "what are you listening to?", "what are you watching?", I thought we'd have one for games.

So, what are you playing? What's top and what's poop?

Currently I'm really into Lego Star Wars on PS2. I bought this primarily for my four year old, but I keep sneaking goes into the night. It's terribly easy but so much fun. It captures so much Star Wars spirit it's difficult not to enjoy it.

The only problem with it is it is split into three chapters: Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. I have completed the first two and gone back through the levels looking for all the extras and found them. I now face a dilemma: do I go through ROTS and encounter spoilers aplenty, which I've avoided for three years so far or do I blow it all with only a two week wait left? Decisions.

I also played Burnout 3 on Xbox recently and was shocked how much I enjoyed it. I think racing games should be burned at the stake but this pleasantly surprised me. Might well purchase it.

Still plowing my way through careers on Fifa 2005 & Tiger Woods 2005. When I've got my buddies round we always play Free 4 All mode on NHL 2005. So much fun and so addictive.

NBA 2005

If anyone else on these boards has this game, they will know that it is simply awesome! So realistic and the gameplay is addictive as hell, perhaps too addictive as i keep missing uni deadlines

I was real dissapointed with NHL 2005, just seemed way too easy.

My ps2 is busted at the moment, full of dust I think. The only game I can play at the moment is Promotion Wars that i downloaded, its good but I tend to get bored with the promotions after a while unless I bring in lots of new people or swap to a new fed entirely.

www.promotionwars.co.uk

Final Fantasy X (PS2)

I'm currently still at the Snubia desert near the Al Baed home. Tis a mega fun game & is satisfing ( sp?) to see your characters stats grow

Tiger Woods 2005 (PS2)

Meh, I havent really got far. But, I'am keeping at it Tis a great & fun game overall


RATWWE.

Just finished Knights of the Old Rebublic II and playing through the first one.

Punisher is fun but gets old quick unless you play with the cheats to get some versatility out of it.

Bought Fable. Pish.

I've been mostly playing Pro Evo 4. The fixture schedule in my household is gruelling, there's little time for anything else.

Still, stuff I've played a bit of since the last gaming thread came up:

Wario Ware: Touched!: Almost, almost as good as GBA wario ware. Incredibly addictive, highscore-tastic. Tap tap tap, rub rub, scribble, scribble etc. The blowing into the microphone games are utterly crap though.

Metal Slug 1-5/X via Neo Geo emulator. Myself and friend, pad each, ten credits, see how far we get. Great fun

Wind Jammers, also via Neo Geo emu. Pong with added shazam.

Occasional multiplayer bouts of Dream mix TV world fighters (Shameless smash brothers clone from Konami) and Guilty Gear: Isuka (Guilty Gear XX with one more character and four player mode). Halo, Halo 2 and Sega Soccer slam also see multiplayer action.

Silent hill 4 - This is the first Silent Hill game that's come dangerously close to falling into the "never to be finished" pile. I don't dislike it, I'm a huge fan of the series and survival horror in general, but again the Pro Evo 4 schedule is eating up the gaming time. Bujingai suffered a similar fate, I haven't progressed on that in ages, but then every time I load it up I just play the first level again to try and chain the entire stage into one big combo. It is definitely do-able.

As an aside I'm slowly building up my ultimate MUGEN set up. For those who don't know, it's a 2D beatemup engine for the PC that gives you a front end, some basic options, a character select screen, some menus and one default character. The idea is to create your own fighters and build your own game. However, as I'm not nearly talented enough to do this, I'm reliant on the frankly awesome development community to provide conversions of almost every character from every 2d beat em up you care to name.

So.. I've downloaded a swanky skin and a giant character select screen with slots for 200+ characters, and I'm going through the process of adding my favourites from every 2D fighter I can think of. I'm giving each character a unique stage (their own from their game of origin if I can find it) and music from my MP3 collection, though again a lot of them have their own theme music (especially the streetfighter lot).

So far I've included the vast majority of characters from Streetfighter, King of Fighters, Guilty Gear X, Samurai Showdown, Last Blade, Garou:MOTW, Rage of the dragons, Melty Blood, Darkstalkers, Xmen/Marvel series and many more. It'll take a long time to weed out those I don't like (Maxima from KOF won't last long) and settle on a final roster, but my aim is for it to be the ultimate 2D beatemup set up.

I gave up on finding the Cacti
Great game if a little easy- saying that ive still only completed 66%

I'm too skint to buy new games, so I'm variously playing:-

* Burnout (which I'm crap at, but really enjoy)

* Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven (which I absolutely fucking suck at and am rapidly going off)

* Metal Gear Solid (stuck on the fight with Metal Gear REX)

* VPW2 (quite possibly my favourite-ist game ever)

Long commuting journeys are made more bearable by Lemmings and Sensible Soccer on my mobile and I've also just started C&C: Red Alert 2 on my PC, as I had a hankering for some RTS.

Playing a lot of Touken Retsuden 4 at the moment, plus Giant Gram 2000. Also dipping in and out of random SNES games I have emulated on the PC, of which there are a lot so its rarely the same one twice (though Tetris Battle Gaiden rules!)

>sticks it on the download list<

EDIT: Phil, how much SNES stuff did I give you? A selection or the whole 3 DVD set?

Still Pro Evo 4. Bought Gran Turismo 4 but oinly played it once. PES4 is great, and free time is at a premium.

Currently Playing:

Forza Motorsport (Xbox): The Xbox answer to GT4. And bah God its a good one. IMO it just edges past GT4 in pretty much all areas. The graphics are very good (not amazing, but VERY good). The gameplay is fantastic, and it even includes a realistic damage model (something that has always been lacking in GT games). It should take me a while to get all the way through, but I'm looking forward to it!

Area 51 (Xbox): Very Halo-y in terms of gameplay and graphics. Very good game though, backed up with a good (yet often annoying) story. It has people such as Maralyn Mason and 'Mr Monotone' David Duchovney providing voices. Its comming out on PS2, Xbox and PC this month. If you like Halo type games, i suggest you check this one out!

How in the hadoken have I not heard of this? Where the fuck where the fuck where the fuck link it up?

I found mugennation.com - is that the best place?

Shame on you for not feeling the Maxima love

Linkage for Mugen:

http://www.mugenation.com/ - Has plenty of characters, stages and a couple of guides on how to use it.

http://www.shinmugen.net/

http://www.mugenguild.com - Currently down, but it's about the best site there is for characters and stages.

http://ngmc.retrogames.com/ - Not a massive range of stuff but very thorough and faithful conversions (certain creators feel the need to 'customise' their versions of characters, he doesn't do this), he's done a truckload of fancy looking SNK stages too.

Oh, I should note that it's DOS based. I'm still using good ol' windows 98 y'see. I'm sure there'll be another version that XP people can use though.

I'm struggling thru the monstrosity that is WMXXI for the Xbox,
But then I'm enjoying life on Tiger Woods 2005 on my DS.
Also GT4 and Midnight DUB3 3 on both systems is keeping me awake at nights. Cant beat a bit of multiplayer goldeneye in dr.no's retreat though.

FIFA Street (Gamecube), and occasionally playing Rollercoaster Tycoon on PC, but given that my laptop is a couple of years old, it doesn't handle it well at all.

We have Metal Slug 2 for the office MVS cabinet. It rules. On my own, I can get to stage 5 on one credit. My record's about 1,600,000, I think.



Finding them's easy! Beating them isn't. If you want a challenge, try going back to the village you start in.

I'm currently playing Metroid Prime and Resident Evil Zero, both on GC. Metroid Prime's fun and very addictive but a bit vacuous. I'm currently stalled on the last boss. But it will die. Soon.

Resi Zero's OK but really just more of the same. The design feels a bit lazy in places. If you played the earlier games, you'll like this, and if you didn't, you won't. Resi 4's in the post.

Anyone played Devil May Cry 3? Any thoughts? I think I probably need to pick it up.

Ooh, sounds like a challenge. I can get fairly deep into the first game on 1 credit, haven't tried a 1 credit challenge on number 2.

*Gets to work*.

Devil may cry 3 is awesome if you like mindless gore and violance with a rocking soundtrack!

I am playing Star War Episode III that came out today, it's cool and you can do some really neat things with the light saber. I am looking forward to unlocking the two player duals and bonus misson where you play as Darth Vader

I'm still hooked on Star Wars: Battlefront. Especially the multiplayer game. The splitscreen cloud city platform level is so much fun to play with a friend.

I'm also working my way through Tiger '05 and Halo 2 - and soon hope to purchase Lego Star Wars and WMXXI.

Yeah it's not great, but Free 4 All is a lot of fun with 3 or 4 mates playing.

Still playing Americas Army a hell of a lot. One of the best online first person shooters i've ever played and it's completely free !

Also recently been working on Brothers In Arms and as always the ever trusty Tiger Woods 2005

First attempt, died mid way through stage 3. Actually died on the first stage, very careless start. Stage 2, mummified once, no deaths, the boss/tower set piece is palm sweatingly tense with just one credit to play with.

I'm going to keep going at this. Should at least get to stage 3 without losing a life next time, the first two stages are actually easier than I thought. It certainly puts a different slant on things playing with one credit though, I find myself taking much greater care. Oh, and I'm making sure to collect every pig, frog and other freak collectible to attack that score too.

I'm currently playing Burnout 3 at the moment.

and I've gone back to playing GTA: Vice City again

I've never played any of the GTA games. What is it that makes them so popular?

Someone told me its kind of like Spiderman 2, in that you run/drive around a city do various missions. Is that right?

You can choose to go on a simple killing spree if you want or you can do all the missions. Buying property and killing whores is fun.

Essentially it is travelling around the cities and doing missions, but there's scope to do plenty more.

You can bet on horses, gamble in casinos, buy and sell cars, do minigame work as a cabbie, fireman, paramedic, valet or vigilante police officer. Kill random people, assault police officers, go on a rampage, learn to fly a plane, play pool for money. Go the gym and get your character buffed up... go to junk food establishments and make him eat until he's sick and then slob around until he gets fat. Buy some properties, assemble a posse and go and claim some gang territory for extra income. Get a girlfriend, buy nice clothes and accessories for your character, get whichever car you've stolen customised and fitted with hydraulics, nitros then enter races with it etc etc.

So yeah, lots to do.

We should get some online emulation going again some day.

Currently I'm not playing a lot due to uni (LAST EXAM TOMORROW!) but recently I've been having mammoth multi-player sessions on Mashed - massively underrated game.

I've also just got Lumines for the PSP which looks awesome, so I'll be playing that soon. Wipeout Pure on the way as well.

And I still have to make a start on GTA San Andreas and play Donkey Konga, both of which have sat there since the day I bought them.

Mashed is great from what I've played of it. All the goodness of micro machines and circuit breakers. I like the way those eliminated from each round can have their vengeance on whichever git barged them off a cliff via homing missile too.

Yeah that is awesome especially when you get a lot of tactical missiling going on. There's nothing more satisfying than dodging the missile intended to stop you from winning the race and seeing it smack into your opponent. Awesome.

The game has been tweaked and updated for a US release - called Mashed: Fully Loaded. It has extra tracks and stuff. I've not played it much yet but I will do soon.

If you have an Xbox: BUY IT. NOW.

It's out on the PS2 as well, only £19.99 at Game: http://shop.game.net

Okay. I’m sold. Which GTA game should I get?

Star Wars Galaxies
They've just done their big 'combat upgrade' and the new expansion is out today, so of course the servers are down at the moment! Still enjoying it but it can drag on sometimes.

Shadow of Rome
One of the best fighting games I've ever played, varied and fun, the sneaking bits take away a little from the game but if you can learn to just play them then this game is one of the most fun gaming experiences I've ever had!

The Ur-Quan Masters
Remake/Upgrade of Star Control 2 (search for it) one of the best games ever for storyline/strategy gaming. Seriously you should all try this.

Doomdarks Revenge
yay! 1986 is still calling me back to the land of Icemark! One of, if not THE first, 1st person game where you commanded more than one character. Expansive world, and great fun if you give it a chance They are updating everything on the game at the moment and releasing an update, the original game "Lords of Midnight" is done, DDR is on it's way and a clever programmer has released an updated/enhanced multiplayer version which is wicked. Here's a link...
What am I talking about!

All of them.

Vice City is very 80s in style so if you're a fan of Scarface/Miami Vice type stuff then you'll love this.

GTA 3 was the first 3D game in the series and has a more modern feel to it. Compared to Vice City & San Andreas it is smaller and slightly more limited, but still an awesome game and a good introduction to the series.

San Andreas is like early-mid 90s LA with a real Hip-Hop feel. It's the biggest game of the lot.

I fail to see how anybody couldn't enjoy all of these games, but I'd say the best intro to the series might just be Vice City. It's a nice middle-ground between the other two.

I got hold of PES4 for the PC for a tenner on Monday; since then I've updated it with the Wolf's patch (from PESfan.com), and created Sunderland as a custom team, using the proper Sunderland logo

I've also got GT4 lying around, but I've not felt any urge to play it

Someone (else) has been buying Retro Gamer.

That's because it is mind-numbingly boring. Only subscribers to Max Power ( ) should enjoy that game.

You sir are a god....I still have the original Lords of Midnight in its packaging too (and I think Doomdark's too)....awesome games way ahead of their time!

I'm playing that too but it's way too much like Everquest II set in space. I really don't see what was wrong with the original game. Still, I'm downloading Jump to Lightspeed and Rage Of The Wookies later, so that might be okay.

I'm also playing TEW 2004.
I'm playing a 1983 scenario.
I'am the head booker for NWA: Mid-Atlantic Wrestling or in other words Jim Crockett Promotions which later became World Championship Wrestling (WCW)

I've ran two tv tapings so far & I've also managed to get Dennis Condrey ( of Midnight Express fame), a very young raven & get this Bret Hart~!

And in the Power Plant training camp I have: Booker T, Brian Pillman, David Heath,Mark Calloway ( Undertaker), Scott Steiner, Steve Austin, Tom Zenk. Hopefully when they have learned enough training from Ric Flair, terry Funk, Ricky Steamboat, Dusty Rhodes, Roddy Piper, they will be more than ready to wrestle on our tv tapings

RATWWE

I'm playing:

Lord of The Rings - The Third Age on PS2.
Football Manager 5 - PC
GTA: San Andreas - PS2
Star Wars Galaxies - PC

Not that inspired by GT4 which pissed me off because I thought it would be blinding. I just cannot get into it

This week I have been mostly playing...

Wario Ware (Gamecube) and Touched (DS): Its mostly been my girlfriend hogging my TV and stealing my DS that has reignited my passion for these. Games so short they fill in 10 minute gaps perfectly, until you notice you've been playing for three hours. I have to get better at these, I can't have her being better than me at playing games.
NFL 2k5 (Xbox): I really suck at the one player mode, if you leave your assistant coach to look after your team, they all become shit and I haven't got the time to set up training schedules for all my players. However, in two player all shall fall to the mighty wrath of my Vikings.
Pop Idol (PS2): Blame the girlfriend. Moving on...
Top Spin Tennis (Xbox): I didn't give this a second look when it was first released and picked up a very cheap copy this week. Fantastic game and dare I say, more fun than VT2 on the Dreamcast.
Snatcher (Mega CD): Every couple of years I dig this out and start it from scratch and I love it. I managed to find my Lethal Enforcers light gun this time around too. With an ending that weighs in at around 40 minutes or so and a genuinely engrossing storyline, its a game that just leaps up and screams "remake me!".

I should get round to starting on Zoo Keeper this week, but im not sure I have the urge to start something I hear is so addictive.

I adored the original two in the series, SC3 lost the plot a bit. SC2 was fantastic, a sprawling adventure with finally something in the Sumatra big enough to kick Ur-Quan arse.

I remain undefeated with the Arilou Skiff and the Mycon Podship

What format is the remake?

I wouldn't quite go that far, but it is awesome.

Tennis games in general are just brilliant in multi player.

On the subject of games, have people checked this out?

Not keen, to be honest. With a few exceptions most video game soundtracks are a bit naff when listened to in isolation.

I hired that Pop Idol game once....found it surprisingly enjoyable. Yes, its crap but its pretty funny, especially if you get a few pissed mates round.

PES 4 on the box still.

Unwrapped Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith today. I'm such a spoiler whore DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRSUMSTANCES PLAY IT IF AVOIDING SPOILERS AS IT'S FULL OF CLIPS FROM THE FILM.

Lego Star Wars. Easy but so much fun.