Be Excellent To Each Other

Crackdown completed today.

The good -

- Jumping about and climbing is well done
- Kicking cars about the place
- Orb-hunting

The bad -

- The armed combat, particular the targeting. Too often it'll target a threat miles away rather than the one right in front of you or target a dead body
- The music
- The driving. No fun at all
- Minor flaws and glitches including my character falling into a solid box and being unable to get out; speech at odd times ('Nice work, agent'.. er, ta, I'd put the controller down to have some crisps...), the bit of text showing your percentage chance appearing in the wrong part of the screen, occasionally dodgy camera etc
- Uninspired bosses. Just a case of negotiating more and more complex buildings, just to find the boss and kick their head in.

Rating - B

B

Er?

Finished Batman. Much fun was had, but I'm rather worried that I want to do sexings with Harley Quinn.

I'd give it an A.

Cheers, Cras.

It being Harley of course, you'd have to consider the extreme likelihood that she's secreted a mouse trap (or some other knob mangling device) up her you-know-what.

No worse than a fucking coil in my experience.

Gather round, everyone! GovernmentYard is going to tell us a story!

Burnout Paradise maxed. Well, 1,100 out of 1,250 - I can't see myself buying the Cops and Robbers pack unless it's discounted at some point. Party mode can GTFF unless I can go round Droman's house at some point and whore it there.

Your non-maximum max-out is better than my non-maximum max-out

I did myself a disservice; I've got 1,110.

Of course it's better than yours. I'm better at Burnout than you.

If I hadn't just spent my month's gaming money on GH:Metallica then I'd buy Big Surf Island right now and prove you wrong. Having said that, it has taken you roughly 2 years to get your 1,110 points, so I've got plenty of time to tie you and still be better than you.

18 months. I got it for my birthday in 2008.

I'm definitely going to play the party mode at Droman's house, just to annoy you.

Burny Pee has been sitting on my shelf for months now, completely unplayed. I haven't even taken the disc out of the box, to be exact.

I opened my Burny Pee since getting it off Goozex in May, and wanted to play it online, but instead spent three hours downloading the stupid update, so didn't get to play after all.

Don't make me laugh like that at work again, please. Scanning is never that funny and it is highly suspicious.

Grudge-bearing FTFM.

Everyone who just said they haven't played Burnout online should get to work organising something right now. Without a doubt you'd get eight of us involved and it is awesome.

I am one cannister away from completing LEGO Batman, and it's half way through a level where you have to slide down a ski slope, going through five gates, and only have one chance to do it without restarting the whole level.

FRUSTRATOTRON IS ACTIVE!

So 11 pages in and another thread that about people starting games and it's all getting a bit cumbersome.

I find this thread really useful and probably wouldn't have bothered with Wolverine had it not been mentioned in this very thread.

I've been through the thread and stuck it all together in an Excel Spreadsheet for now but I think we should stick it all on uptojump. That way we can make it searchable and format the text better and generally make for a tidier repository for all this stuff. Maybe even cross reference it to the games started thread / database.

Is this an option? Is anyone interested? Are you my Mummy?

I've attached the spreadsheet - if I've misrepresented you or you want to change your score or want to add anything let me know.I have had to mung a fair bit of the formatting to make it fit into an Excel cell so it's a bit messy and some of the longer posts I have trimmed down a bit so make sure I haven't excised anything important.

I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Nice work.

Too many people giving out the 'S' rating for my liking though! And is one of them incorrect. Zio describes 'Quantum of Solace' as being "meh" and then it gets an 'S' rating?

Shurely shome mishtake.

I only tend to complete games I like, though. I've only given one S, though, and that was Burny Pee.

You fucking HUGE NERD

But I like it

Definitely too many esses. Are you lot easily pleased or wot?!

Oops yes - now amended - changed in original post shortly.

To be fair 5 of them are for the same game.

Trousers is a clever man.

That is splendid.

Err, you've got me down as "http://uptojump.co.uk/2009/02/08/far-cry-2-xbox-360-review/"

Which is a dead link to Dimrills Far Cry 2 review.

Gah - that was the original link in your post - should have checked it foist. Can't find it on the site at all now.

Quick give us a couple of lines about it...

They're all only on Dimmers' site now.

Mmm.

Burnout Paradise - S
A bit hard to argue with, given the obscene amount of playtime. Would've been much lower, though, if it weren't for the social aspect.

Fallout 3 - S
Seems popular. I'd probably only give an A myself, though.

Gears of War 2 - S
Hard to argue against, so long as only multiplayer is considered.

Killzone 2 - S
Again, hard to argue against. It's only problem is the lack of community here on PS3.

Mirrors edge - S
Fun, but a bit short, really. Also: Too many shooty people. A.

Outrun - S+
Outrun 2, I'd give a B.

World of Goo
Not played

Me and Dimrill came to pretty much the same conclusions - That having a beacon on the top of your head, putting every single man into a omniscient murderous rage, while travelling round a large map, got very tired, very quickly.

BZZZZT. Games are to be taken in their entirety and not in parts, or as foundations for player mods.

As a counterpoint, I loved it, and the map was aces. Did get a little repetitive towards the end, and there's a massive storyline bug just before the final scenes



I'd give it a B.

EDIT - though the online play is atrocious.

Agreed. I'd give GoW2 a B.

That's half the point, you dolt. If it was an S, I'd have not said it.

BZZZZT. Sinister agent is to be agreed with at all times.

Just finished Eat Lead on hard. Really quite impressed with this after hearing so many bad reviews. Not great, but certainly not bad. Great sense of humour that actually had be giggling at a few points. C+

Call of Duty 2 - finally finished this after owning first PC then 360 versions. Obviously the graphics have slightly dated, but not too bad really. Some great set pieces and a real feel of being a nobody on the front line. Rank A.

I came up with the grading system (LOOK AT ME), with the idea that C was decent, B was really very good, A was really bloody excellent and S was generation defining creme de la creme perfect awesomeness..

The very fact that lists a bunch of S games followed by an [i]S+[i/] means it doesn't understand it.

Those games are all A ranks and outrun is S. And thats not a crit on any game at all.

/nerdy sense of ownership and correctness over a completely arbitary system over

Oh wait, I'm reading backwards. Trousers is awesome-sauce. Go Trousers. Lets do that.

I have diminished web time till Xmas though, and what to keep Skeptobot alive so I'm out though. What a loser I am.

Meh, it was derivative and dull and everything is a uniform shade of unoriginal grey. But then I thought the same about Gears of War, too, but at least that had the decency to be hilariously homoerotic.

So, tonight I finished episode 2 of Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay. It was decent enough - like all the other Telltale Games, there's times where the game engine gets in the way and you need to wander backwards and forwards a lot, and the control system in this is still the worst thing ever invented, ever. A few of the puzzles were a bit obtuse and yes, I had to resort to a walkthrough once, but I don't feel bad about this, particularly. Pretty much every Telltale game has been a solid 7/10, and this one was no exception.

Just finished Brütal Legend to 100% on normal difficulty. Awesome experience.

Finished Uncharted (the first one) last night. Great, apart from the silly gunfight at the end.

Finished Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts this afternoon. My obsessive achievement whore self made me hate it, as some of the gold times on the challenges were evil.

GeoDefense Swarm for the iPhone - COMPLETED!

Awesome game. By far the best Tower Defense game I've played.

Rating - A.

All level completed and currently playing the 'endless' final level.

I'm on swarm wave 212 and they're still not getting past my massive defenses!

Oh yeah, I did the single player campaign in MW2 about a week or so ago. It was alright. Finally had another go at the MP on the weekend and it's finally starting to not be the disorientating mess of looking at killcams all the time.

So far, for SP I'll give it a solid B+ as the game was a bit too on-rails for me. No disrespect to the budget - you can see where it's gone, but it's a bit too linear and way too short.

Jury is obviously out on the MP which at the moment looks promising I just don't have five hours a day to do it justice.

recently:


Brutal Legend: too short to be satisfying but then dragged out obscenely by the worst achievements of all time. C

Saw: after an hour you've seen the whole thing really. Plays like Lost: Via Domus meets bad Silent Hill. D

AC2: I love you Ezio. A

Picked up Rock Band: The Beatles yesterday, in a special value pack (Game, microphone, wired drums, wired guitar) for £40, and completed it the same day on Expert guitar with Miss Malabar (bass) and my elder brother (drums).

It's quite good, with a nice story mode taking you through the history of the band, from their early Cavern days right to the end* and split. It was an interesting concept, seeing how they changed dramatically over the few years. It was nice to see a proper band game, too, instead of having to play a load of seemingly-randomly selected support bands; it's The Beatles, and nothing but as, as far as I can tell.

It was all a bit too easy, though, and took a real nosedive in the middle during their more experimental psychedelic period, and I found myself lying down, almost nodding off at more than a few points, even on the hardest difficulty — there really was practically no challenge there, and I'm far from a brilliant player; I'll try drums next, I reckon.

The whole feel, artwork and sound remain absolutely brilliantly realised, the game almost being worth it (for the price we paid) for that alone.

I can't give it a score yet, as I haven't had enough time with it. Hopefully the drumming or bass will make it a bit more interesting and challenging for me, but I'm not holding out for much. It's certainly no Guitar Hero: Metallica in terms of difficulty, but how could it?


*they really weren't around for long, were they!?