WHAT PLAY YOU?

[Just Me]

I'll be playing Resident Evil 5 come friday if that counts.

Me too.. cant wait for it! Judging from the reviews so far it will be pretty awesome. I still regard Resident Evil 4 as one of the top 5 games of all time.

The reviews and feedback I've read haven't been so glowing, all from people who loved RE4 as much as you do.

[MRMIdAS]

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - The Director's Cut

 

it's reet good, loads of new Nico bit's so far, puzzles involving the touch screen and ditailed faces on the top screen along with the text.

[Chest Rockwell]

Had a bash at the new maps on COD WaW last night... They all seem very good (unlike with COD4 where Creek sucked balls big time) and I like what they've done with the new Zombies map.

 

It's cool the way they split you up to start with, the fact that the mystery box can be depleted, and the scary new voice is actually terrifying. Also - gooseshambling nazi zombies

 

Haven't tried out the perks machine or the insta-regenerate machine yet... But overall there seems like there'll be a lot of new tactics and strategies to employ which is cool, because we totally had our game plan for the old zombie map down to a T, so this will give it a whole new lease of life. Also the way we figured it with the last map, there was definitely one tactic that seemed better than any other whereas this one it seems like there will be a number of areas you can hold down each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

 

 

Yeah.. we ended up playing more zombies than actual COD. We should all just buy Left 4 Dead, clearly. Still, after more than a month off from COD I maintained a positive ratio in every round I played so I wasn't too rusty!! Nice to know I got it like that..

[rubbafish]

I have just picked up Sega Rally for the 360. Not bad, enjoying it but just isn't the same as the old Sega Saturn version. That was classic.

[Harvey Dent]

I got GTA Chinatown Wars on DS and its fucking brilliant. It works really well and theres lots of really cool touchscreen stuff you can do that really adds to the experience.

[FLips]

I got GTA Chinatown Wars on DS and its fucking brilliant. It works really well and theres lots of really cool touchscreen stuff you can do that really adds to the experience.

 

It is exceptional isn't it? I completed the other week. Favourite GTA up there with London and Vice City.

[FLips]

Henry Hatsworth is also all types of awesome, if not really hard.

Edited March 31, 2009 by AliveAndAmplified

[MRMIdAS]

Broken Sword 2.5

 

http://www.brokensword25.com/

 

Voices are in German ATM (English "coming soon"), but subs are in English, so far it's good, although "die if you fuck up" has reared it's head twice already.

[JLM]

Streetfighter IV. See other threads for (excessive) details.

 

However, the other reason for thread-bumpery is that myself and Whinehouse kicked it old skool over the weekend and completed The Adventures of Batman and Robin on the SNES. Well, more specifically a SNES emulator running on my Xbox, but still.

 

Early hours of Sunday morning, bored as hell, fired up the SNES emulator for some nostalgia. Looked through the list, noted that I had Adventures of Batman and Robin and thought "Is that the good Batman game that Konami did?" Turns out it is indeed. I then commented "that game is really fucking hard, do you know I've never actually bothered to finish the first level?" The seed had been sown, and three hours or so later and we had conquered it. I say conquered it, but I really mean "stumbled through it with the aid of copious savestate usage to get through bits of the game that are surely impossible to do in one sitting".

 

Anyway, yes, the game's based on the animated series (with the awesome Mark Hamill Joker) and has excellent visuals, music and themed stages that all capture the style of the show brilliantly. But, as menitoned, it's really fucking hard.

 

First stage has The Joker as the villain. You're eased in with some nice'n'easy generic goon bashing, allwoing you to enjoy the smooth animation and satisfying thwacking sound of fist meeting goon face. Also using the batarang to disarm the goons who have guns. Sweet. You then enter Joker's funhouse, which is surprisingly tricky considering it's the second location in the entire game. It's not deadly, but getting through there without getting hit is very tough.

 

Following that, you enter an absolutely ridiculous and epic boss battle against The Joker that has to be one of the hardest opening stage endings ever. First you ride a rollercoaster in side-on 2D. The Joker is on another one alongside you and he throws bombs at you in a flurry at different heights to try and knock you off. At two points you go through a loop the loop, at which point you have to duck because there are these giant lollipop things that knock you off in one hit and cause INSTANT DEATH WITH NO WARNING. The Joker is still throwing bombs at you while this happens. Survive that and you get to a flat bit with more bombing. Then the speed cranks up and we cut to a mode 7 hurtling into the screen section where you and Joker are side by side on your rollercoasters. Joker is about three feet away from you, you're stood on a rollercoaster cart that's barely wider than your character and The Joker starts throwing more bombs at you as you try to hit them back with jump kicks whilst avoiding a fall onto the tracks which causes INSTANT DEATH. If a couple of bombs hit you, you'll most likely get knocked backwards, ultimately sliding onto the track and your INSTANT DEATH.

 

If you survive that bit, it then cuts back to 2D side-on and you have to jump from your coaster to the Joker's because your track ends all of a sudden. This bit isn't as hard as it appears, but failing it does of course lead to INSTANT DEATH. Should you board Joker's rollercoaster, you then fight him one on one, hand to hand in a confined space, which isn't too taxing but if you did it one sitting there's every chance you're on low health by now. Once you've fought him for a bit and given him a bit of a kicking, he bails and the stage is mercifully over.

 

Jesus Christ on a bike. I'd imagine a number of young Batman fans were bought this game by their parents and never saw the second stage, or at least had to find the passwords somewhere to get past the first.

 

The second stage is Poison Ivy themed and has some fiendish platform sections involving the grappling hook. Also you're not allowed to punch or kick Ivy's female goons. Lame. Plenty of opportunities for INSTANT DEATH whilst hopping from tree to tree. Branches break, trees collapse, the grappling hook is tricky to use and sometimes results in comedy accidental death... it's all challenging stuff. Then there's a greenhouse pit with collapsing floors that drop you into spiky vine pits of death without warning. Nice. Then there's a giant plant boss that requires at least a death or two before you get a hold of its attack pattern.

 

Stage 3 is The Penguin's stage and is deeply tedious. You go from floor to floor and room to room in a museum looking for hostages. Robin features in this stage in his only active bit of participation. Apparently the game was developed before the series was renamed to include him, and as such he had to be shoe-horned in. It amused me that his only appearance aside from cameo roles flying vehicles or giving bits of advice sees him getting kidnapped and tied up. Classic Robin. Stage is only noteable because the boss fight against Penguin is a bit of an arse. He has annoying hand to hand skills, plus the benefit of a large helicopter gunship attempting to spray you to death during the fight.

 

Stage 4 is Catwoman and features some reasonably tricky platforming accross the rooftops, some frustrating wall to wall jumping, two hand to hand fights with Catwoman (who is quite capable of killing you) and also a free-falling section which leads to INSTANT DEATH if you don't manage get your grappling hook shot right before you run out of things to grab. Also a bit where she pushes signs over to fall on you that take a ridiculous amount of health off you considering that they're extremely tough to avoid.

 

Stage 5 is Two-Face's stage and it's absolutely shit. Top-down vehicle driving stage with poor handling, awful visuals and INSANELY harsh time limits. We had to save state it each time a corner was taken well, because two mistakes in the same run will see you fail it! Ridiculous. A total waste of Two-Face and the least fun part of the whole game. Ludicrously hard like the other bits. Failing to get to each checkpoint in time counts as an INSTANT DEATH.

 

Stage 6 is Scarecrow. The only bit a remember vividly is standing on the wing of the Bat plane whilst a big barrage of gas filled balloons floats around you at increasingly annoying heights. Some of them drop down underneath you and then float back up to hit your legs. I experienced THE RAGE during this sequence. There's also a bit where you have to traverse the underside of Scarecrow's blimp using sequential grappling hook shots to get some SPiderman-esque swinging going. Numerous failures at this resulted in INSTANT DEATH. THen you have to fight Scarecrow hand to hand whilst standing on the wings of his plane. Luckily he's easily beaten because you can get him into a repeating loop that totally stops him attacking you. Thank the lord for that.

 

Stage 7 is Riddler's stage, and I pitied Whinehouse for having to slog through it. It's a big sprawling maze interspersed with teleporters and a couple of Riddles here and there. It seemed to take days to get through it. Also, key areas of the maze require plastic explosives to get through. There's no real indication of which ones can be blown up, and you only get five explosives. So it's a trial and error situation except you can't afford any errors. How you're supposed to do it without savestates is beyond me. Once you've got through that (and it takes AGES) you get into a prolonged Riddler boss fight on a big trippy chessboard. There are many, many many opportunities for INSTANT DEATH here. Pixel-perfect jumping is required as Riddler knocks out squares of the chessboard as you run away from marauding chess pieces. THE RAGE welled up inside me again (I took over for the boss fight bit) and this is where I concldued that no child ever finished this game.

 

Stage 8 is THE GAUNTLET~! This involves a hand to hand fight with The Penguin, then The Scarecrow, then Clayface (who hasn't featured yet, thus requiring you to learn his attack patterns from scratch after already fighting two bosses), then Catwoman, then Man-Bat (who hasn't featured yet, thus requiring etc. etc.) and then a fight with The Joker again. Were they absolutely taking the piss here? Seriously? SIX BOSS FIGHTS??? BACK TO BACK?? IN ONE LIFE??? ARE YOU FUCKING JOKING?? We ended up save-stating after Whinehouse figured out Penguin and beat his ass good. I then used my cheap Scarecrow method to beat him unscathed and we saved again. We had to do this all the way through. If we landed a few hits without taking damage, we saved. If we got to a small break in the action and still had full health, we saved.

 

The punchline to all of this? We completed the game, sat through the credits and were greeted with "Now try hard mode". Fuck yourselves Konami. Fuck yourselves. Hard mode has no passwords for the levels, no continues and increased damage from all the enemies. So you're to complete the entire game with three lives and no second chances. Riiiiight.

 

If you're a Batman fan this game is awesome. I loved the Man-bat and Clayface surprised cameos. Harley Quinn is in there as well. The music and visuals are excellent and it's cool that a good number of major villains get their own themed stages. If you have a SNES emulator then I urge you to give it a shot, but be warned that it's, well, not very easy.

[Loki]

Games were simply much harder in those days; no such thing as playtesting. I remember Thundercats on the Speccy being insanely difficult, just getting to the 2nd level and the hoverboards was a massive achievement.

[JLM]

Aye, a lot of the 16 bit platformers are really really taxing. The main thing with a lot of them is not the individual challenges (all of which can be overcome) but the fact that the lack of restart points and saves meant that you were asked to do so many instant life-and-death challenges in quick succession without fail that it made them unfairly hard.

 

Anyone try the hover bikes level on Battletoads on the NES? Good grief.

[Onyx2]

The SNES went through a mental period of having rock-hard licensed platformers, that somehow urged you on regardless. I loved Alien3, but that was absurdly difficult. See also: anything produced by THQ in the early 90s.

 

Myself just playing lots of SFIV and the stunning UFC Undisputed demo. My wife sat down while I was playing, looked up after a minute and only then realised I was playing, not watching UFC. Incredible mechanics too, I'm astonished they've finally fitted the nuances of MMA round a pad.

[Metallica]

I've been playing LittleBigPlanet lately through a LoveFilm trial (). Stephen Fry adds so much to the game. I don't think those tutorial videos would have been as fun to do if it just had anyone else doing the voice-over. Very enjoyable game and yesterday I made my own level! Woo!

 

If anyone wants to play it to see good or bad my level is, then search for Tallica1981 as the user/creator

 

There's a couple good prizes at the end. I think it's pretty fun

Edited May 5, 2009 by Metallica

[Deaq]

Following that, you enter an absolutely ridiculous and epic boss battle against The Joker that has to be one of the hardest opening stage endings ever. First you ride a rollercoaster in side-on 2D. The Joker is on another one alongside you and he throws bombs at you in a flurry at different heights to try and knock you off. At two points you go through a loop the loop, at which point you have to duck because there are these giant lollipop things that knock you off in one hit and cause INSTANT DEATH WITH NO WARNING. The Joker is still throwing bombs at you while this happens. Survive that and you get to a flat bit with more bombing. Then the speed cranks up and we cut to a mode 7 hurtling into the screen section where you and Joker are side by side on your rollercoasters. Joker is about three feet away from you, you're stood on a rollercoaster cart that's barely wider than your character and The Joker starts throwing more bombs at you as you try to hit them back with jump kicks whilst avoiding a fall onto the tracks which causes INSTANT DEATH. If a couple of bombs hit you, you'll most likely get knocked backwards, ultimately sliding onto the track and your INSTANT DEATH.

 

If you survive that bit, it then cuts back to 2D side-on and you have to jump from your coaster to the Joker's because your track ends all of a sudden. This bit isn't as hard as it appears, but failing it does of course lead to INSTANT DEATH. Should you board Joker's rollercoaster, you then fight him one on one, hand to hand in a confined space, which isn't too taxing but if you did it one sitting there's every chance you're on low health by now. Once you've fought him for a bit and given him a bit of a kicking, he bails and the stage is mercifully over.

 

Walk to the middle of the the rollercoaster duck and use low strikes. You dont get hit by no bombs at all and are under all the lights its simple doing it this way.

 

Stage 7 is Riddler's stage, and I pitied Whinehouse for having to slog through it. It's a big sprawling maze interspersed with teleporters and a couple of Riddles here and there. It seemed to take days to get through it. Also, key areas of the maze require plastic explosives to get through. There's no real indication of which ones can be blown up, and you only get five explosives. So it's a trial and error situation except you can't afford any errors.

 

Use the goggles and the walls you have to blow up are see threw when you put the goggles on them.

 

Just random but did you get the real ending or did you not do it on the hardiest setting?

 

If you think Batman on the Snes is hard keep well away from the Megadrive version which is much much harder.

Edited May 5, 2009 by Deacon.Dispair

[KingOfMetal]

why can't it be May 22nd, i want to play UFC