30 Days of Gaming

[Surf Digby]

That is why PC gaming will always be the nerdy, less interesting brother of console gaming. Nobody wants to gather around a PC screen whilst you whizz your mouse around and fart into your faux-leather chair.

Except for Doom. Doom made PCs cool for a brief moment.

 

Consoles are more sociable, swopping controllers and eating pizza, fighting over Bomberman or NHL Hockey 95, or picking off your mate with a missile launcher whilst pulling on a fat bifter during a late-night session of Halo.

Quoted for truth. 3/4 player Goldeneye until 5am on a worknight? Regularly.

 

Very difficult for me to pick a preferred system, as I didn't get a PS1 until after the PS2 was released. I have a lot of good memories from the Commodore Amiga era, and that had two joystick ports on it too.

[King Pitcos]

I'm torn between the SNES and PlayStation. The SNES was when gaming really took over my childhood. It came out in April, I think, but I wasn't getting one until my birthday in July. I remember going to Comet -- or wanting to -- every day to play Super Mario World on the display SNES there. My next door neighbour got hers in May, and we rinsed Mario World for months. Then I did the same when I got my own SNES.

 

Near enough 100% of my pocket money went on Nintendo and multiformat gaming magazines. On a Friday, I'd wait for my dad to get home from work, get my fiver and race to get to the newsagents before it closed. I can't remember if this made me miss the start or the end of Gamesworld. I remember seeing some preview images of Super WrestleMania in a magazine in Asda and having a childgasm. The character select screen images looked like photos!

 

All week, I was playing games. The hours I put into Kevin Keegan Player Manager. On Saturdays, me and my best mate would spend the entire day playing football outside and playing the SNES. We spent a month trying to do the "blood in Mortal Kombat" cheat from a magazine that involved sellotaping a penny on top of the cartridge for extra weight, until the next issue came out and revealed it had been an April Fool's joke. We should really have spent more time doing homework and not being thick cunts. We even loved that Ryan Giggs football game that the magazines panned.

 

Street Fighter 2 was probably my favourite Christmas present ever, the hype for that game was unbelievable. That was another one where we'd get impossible cheats (press YYABXXYYBABAXXYYBAYYXXLXBALRAYYX on the Capcom screen) from the rumour mill to unlock the four bosses as playable characters. Games just seemed more special then, partly because I was a kid, partly because they were stupidly expensive and you were lucky if you got three in a year. I'd normally have one I really wanted for my birthday, one I really wanted for Christmas, and then once or twice in the year I'd get a cheap one second-hand or off petty criminals round by us. I remember getting Saturday Night Slam Masters from a car boot sale towards the end of my SNES days, I'd never heard of it but it had wrestlers on it. I loved that game at the time. I never got into the RPGs at all though, for some reason. I never played Chrono Trigger until 2002 on an emulator.

 

The PSX was a game-changer. You could get magazines that had demos! And everything seemed like such a step up. Even loading times made it feel sophisticated, as I'd had PC/Amiga/Commodore envy through my NES and SNES days. I hadn't even planned on getting one, I'd been intending on an N64 but that didn't come out in time for Christmas so I went with Sony. I remember the bundled demo disc being full of wonders like Broken Sword -- it was a cartoon you could play. My brother berated me for buying WWF In Your House with my Christmas money instead of Broken Sword. But the days of being stuck with one game for six months were over. I now played a new game every single weekend, rented on the Friday and returned on the Sunday.

 

Final Fantasy VII, GTA and WCW vs The World coming out the following Christmas was perhaps the peak. I remember how excited I was for FFVII, but then I only ever played it a couple of times. It was too vast, the materia and armour and money system demanded more responsibility than I was comfortable with. I'd skipped RPGs on the SNES, remember, so it was all too new and scary. That was when it started to go downhill for me. Copies rose in prominence around this time as well. I remember going with my brother in law to some random bloke's house to pay

[Ron Simmons]

It all came crashing down a bit though. It was the PlayStation that tapered my interest in gaming off. When copies went down to about

[The Gaffer]

I think a combination of gamers growing up and games themselves becoming more photorealistic has robbed the whole thing of a lot of the imaginative joy it once had. Skyrim is the only up and coming game I can imagine spending any length of time with this year. I'm either replaying old games or not playing games at all. I hate the whole competetive culture of 'serious' games. Even when I try to play something like Call Of Duty for fun it ends up feeling like a commitment to serious business soon enough.

[PunkStep]

Xbox 360. I loved SNES and have probably spent more time playing the PS2 than any other console, but I personally find it hard to choose a non-current gen console. Current generation is always best for me, so I say Xbox 360 is the best at the moment but then this wil change during the next gen.

[Loki]

I think a combination of gamers growing up and games themselves becoming more photorealistic has robbed the whole thing of a lot of the imaginative joy it once had. Skyrim is the only up and coming game I can imagine spending any length of time with this year. I'm either replaying old games or not playing games at all. I hate the whole competetive culture of 'serious' games. Even when I try to play something like Call Of Duty for fun it ends up feeling like a commitment to serious business soon enough.

 

That's probably why I enjoyed Portal and Mirror's Edge so much in recent years. They actually FEEL like computer games. Aside from the odd shooter, I almost don't play games any more, but I'm starting to big into Live Arcade a bit more as there are some cracking old-school games on there.

 

For example, Inferno:

 

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/Product/...15-d80258550638

 

a gorgeous twin-stick shooter-cum-Gauntlet clone type thing. That's what games should look like.

[FLips]

I think a combination of gamers growing up and games themselves becoming more photorealistic has robbed the whole thing of a lot of the imaginative joy it once had. Skyrim is the only up and coming game I can imagine spending any length of time with this year. I'm either replaying old games or not playing games at all. I hate the whole competetive culture of 'serious' games. Even when I try to play something like Call Of Duty for fun it ends up feeling like a commitment to serious business soon enough.

 

That's probably why I enjoyed Portal and Mirror's Edge so much in recent years. They actually FEEL like computer games. Aside from the odd shooter, I almost don't play games any more, but I'm starting to big into Live Arcade a bit more as there are some cracking old-school games on there.

 

For example, Inferno:

 

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/Product/...15-d80258550638

 

a gorgeous twin-stick shooter-cum-Gauntlet clone type thing. That's what games should look like.

 

RadianGames do some class games, but they're all a bit similar to each other. When I first started out they were one of the companies that sent me their games to review, I got on well with the guy who runs it.

[Kaz Hayashi]

Day 12 - A game everyone should play

 

This is, like im sure many others will be, a very ticky choice. I don't know if i should go with a modern game or a blast from the past. So i think im going to go with something with a an old school classic. Ive mentioned it before purely because it was an amiazing game an i would LOVE it to be re-made on a current or future console.

 

SKITCHIN

 

 

 

 

I know ive already mentioned why it was great, im not sure if many people on here have played it but i personally think it was incredible for its time. It was obviously ripped from the Road Rash series, Road Rash being the game i was going to mention, but ive already bummed it to death in a previous post.

Skitchin was basically Road Rash on Roller Blades, exactly the same format and visual, long roads, you race to the end of the game and have a punch up along the way.

You could grab on to the back of cars, cop cars and vans to get ahead quicker, whilst having a fight with another competitor as you hold on to the back of the car. If you hold on to the back of the car for too long and the driver becomes aware of you, they can slow right down and other racers pass you, or they could 'pop their boot' and you would fall like a sack of shit. If you hold on to the back of a police car for a bit too long, you cant let go and you get driven to the cop shop. Also you could create boosters if you release your grip from a car in a certain way, making you almost pull the car behind you whilst you zoom away from it.

 

 

It also contained ramps randomly placed around the course/road, the better trick you pulled off on the ramp, the more money you could earn, not always an easy thing to do though. Especially when certain things were annoying placed in a typical landing area, such as road works and spilled oil (clear them though, even more cash could be earned).

 

The weapons ranged from bats to chains to bloody tasers.. etc, and caused more damage to the other racers if you hit them, likewise if they hit you, but time your attack right (as they are swinging) and you could pinch their weapon.

 

 

You earned more cash for higher poistions when you finish a race, with that money you could buy new and upgraded parts for your roller blades making them more durable and faster, needed when you play higher stages against faster opponents.

 

 

Bonus stages to earn money, no other racers, but loads of ramps ahead of you on a mini course, these ramps were like 'super ramps', you could pull of insane tricks such as double back flips and 360 rotational flips. Landing these again, earned you cash.

 

You could pick a song from your 'portable CD player' to listen too before races from around 15 tracks.

 

Roller Blades were very much 'in' at the time, it was this kind of thing (for its time) which made the game mint, that plus things like the 'portable CD walkman', again, very much in at the time.

 

A bloody fantastic game, i assume it maybe didnt sell as well as it should have, or maybe because after the roller blade boom, they never thought of re-creating the game. I wish they would and if you have a mega drive or a decent emulator, play this game, it was and i believe, was awesome.

 

[patiirc]

Game Everyone should play is simple

 

Global Defence Force (PS2)

 

 

 

The first two levels can be seen here

 

Although a bit sullied given recent events ( Japan gets trashed ), you can still trash London so thats allright

 

Part of the Simple 2000 series of games, this is a budget game that spawned from Monster Attack, a shorter game with less characters but menacing alien invaders none the less.

 

 

Global Defence Force, pits you versus a myriad of aliens and that's pretty much it, you can either be a GDF grunt, or a Palewing who can soar above the action using her jet pack. The ultimate aim is to repulse the alien invaders and save the day for all of humanity

 

During the game you will fight giant ants, spiders and space ships as well as facing one of the biggest bosses I have ever seen which is the size of an entire city to achieve your objective. Failing that there is always

 

 

The game also features some RPG-lite elements with grinding required to effectively level up your character and allow you access to complete harder levels and earn better weapons to fight off the alien hoard's There are 300 different weapons in the game to find!

 

 

 

This is not all though, as finish The Inferno difficulty, which is pretty damn fucking hard, you are presented with Impossible which pretty much eliminates all of your health and keeps the difficulty high. You will have the most devastating weapon known to man though, so that's something.

 

Okay the draw distances arent great and grinding is a chore to play the harder levels. but nearly everything is destructable you can use tanks, helicopters and skiffs to attack the enemym, snipe from buidlings or even on enemies themselves to reach objective and it has 2 player local Co-op

 

 

This game was largely overlooked upon release, and was lauded in Gamecentral and a few other places but no more. It has an xbox360 sequel and is being remade for the PSP and has two further sequels due to come out later this/next year

 

Utterly fantastic and mesmerising game that puts many others to shame. If you must play one game this is it

[Harvey Dent]

I was going to go with something slightly more obscure for this, but there's a reason that this is my game everyone should play...

 

 

 

... that reason is it's just fucking awesome.

 

To me Super Mario Bros. 3 is everything a great game should be. Sure there have been major technology advancements in the 23 years since this game came out, but this game captured my imagination like no other and I'm not alone. I must've been about 5/6 when I got this and I'd had the previous 2 Mario games and several others on the family NES before, but apon playing Mario 3 was the moment when I became a gamer.

 

 

This is the quintessential 2D platformer. The world maps, the super power ups, the level design, the variety. Everything about it just blew my mind. There was a far greater level of depth than anything seen in a platform game before. I wish I could see the look of sheer wonderment on my face as I kid when I was playing it. Even now I still play it time and time again on my GameBoy or virtual console and still feel the same way. This is, without doubt, a game everyone should play.

[Kookoocachu]

 

Yes, I know I'm as predictable as an old boot, but I wouldn't be able to sleep if I didn't blow the MGS horn.

This game changed my life. I remember reading about it prior to release, and I was desperate to have something other than what I would call 'fluffy' games. Tactical espionage action? that sounded like my sort of thing so off I plodded to buy it on release day. The guy behind the till told me I was a very lucky girl as it was the last copy and proceeded to tell me about how much he had been looking forward to it. I didn't care for his drivel, I was 12, all I wanted to do was get back home and lock myself in my room for days with this game, some coca-cola and a multipack of crisps. I was with my friend at the time, who was too dim to understand the awesomeness that it looked as much as I tried to explain to her over a MacDonalds before we got the bus home. She told me she would rather buy make-up. PAH!

Anyway, After my first play I was hooked. Soon my friends and I (all boys of course) would have games of manhunt MGS style, whilst trying not to be seen by other players we had to dodge security guards and workers at factories which was always fun.

 

 

Why should you play it? It revolutionised gaming. It lead the way for stealth gaming so you would have to avoid enemies with tactics and stealth rather than engaging them in combat. You will never forget the great time you'll have playing this game. The story is amazing and the direction of the cut scenes is awesome. Plus, you get to run around and be stealthy in a box. A BOX. No other game had anything like this. Ground breaking. It has certainly saved my bacon for a few fancy dress parties. The OST is also amazing and has been continued to be so over the entire Metal Gear games.

 

A close second to this has to be Snake Eater.

 

 

Had a laugh with Metal Gear Solid? You'll piss yourself with Snake Eater. It has kept the awesomeness of it's legacy (let's just forget about Sons of Liberty, although you should still play that too) whilst being even more hilarious. Before this was released I thought the Metal Gear games were over but I was so wrong. I could go on forever here but I'll keep it short.

The beauty of Snake Eater is that you can just pick it up, mess around, have a laugh, and then put it back down. If you don't have time to get really into a game one afternoon, that's fine! You can have a lot of fun in 10 minutes. The boss levels in this are mind blowing. Funny, not overly easy, and very dramatic. The whole game is very dramatic really. I've always loved Snake, but I completely fell in love with Big Boss/Naked Snake playing this game. Here's some really good tribute videos, Spoilers, obviously.

 

 

 

I've become very shallow thanks to Metal Gear, as I now judge people heavily on whether they have played it and what they thought of it. Sad and brutal but true.

[FLips]

Metal Gear Solid is rated 18 so that story about you being 12, buying it over the counter and getting told you're a lucky girl seems a bit off. Even though PEGI never started until the early 2000s, it was still rated M in America and so you'd think it'd be rated something high over here. I might be wrong

[Kookoocachu]

Metal Gear Solid is rated 18 so that story about you being 12, buying it over the counter and getting told you're a lucky girl seems a bit off. Even though PEGI never started until the early 2000s, it was still rated M in America and so you'd think it'd be rated something high over here. I might be wrong

Well I bought it. My parents were behind me, along with my little 9yr old brother and my best friend. Kids never got refused to buy a game back then, not here anyway.

[Harvey Dent]

Metal Gear Solid is rated 18 so that story about you being 12, buying it over the counter and getting told you're a lucky girl seems a bit off. Even though PEGI never started until the early 2000s, it was still rated M in America and so you'd think it'd be rated something high over here. I might be wrong

 

 

I also remember buying it in a store, they didn't really give a shit back them. Only a few games were rated by BBFC and those were the ones with the film like certificates they wouldn't sell to me. Metal Gear Solid carried no such circle of doom when it was released. I also echo the Metal Gear love, also my favourite series and I nearly picked it too, but I felt SMB3 was a more appropriate choice for this section.

[FLips]

Metal Gear Solid is rated 18 so that story about you being 12, buying it over the counter and getting told you're a lucky girl seems a bit off. Even though PEGI never started until the early 2000s, it was still rated M in America and so you'd think it'd be rated something high over here. I might be wrong

 

 

I also remember buying it in a store, they didn't really give a shit back them. Only a few games were rated by BBFC and those were the ones with the film like certificates they wouldn't sell to me. Metal Gear Solid carried no such circle of doom when it was released. I also echo the Metal Gear love, also my favourite series and I nearly picked it too, but I felt SMB3 was a more appropriate choice for this section.

 

Ah, my bad then, sorry KooKoo. I had a chipped PS1 so never had such experiences. Except Megaman 8, I got that for real because I'm a mark.