Be Excellent To Each Other

Indicative of the publisher's general attitude, though. Traditionally, once they've got your money EA don't give a toss. There's usually one patch to sort out the more egregious issues and that's your lot. Fingers crossed for the new update, but it'd be coming a bit late for me. It made it immeasurably more difficult for me to get my reputation up because there was literally nobody left to pick for my club side who could pass for shit. If I'd wanted that, I'd have stayed at Watford.

It was night and day comparing the week to week slog at Milan with a team of cloggers to when I got to play for the national side, with Becks and Rooney and Gerrard picking out intelligent through-balls and pinging beautiful crosses without my even having to ask.

I just have no idea how something this big and obvious got through playtesting without being fixed.

I've not experienced the issue, but then again I'm not team captain yet. Didn't you say it only happened when you changed the team in between games using the Y menu?

I think that's the problem. Certainly, I never altered the team/formation with England and never had the issue. On the other hand, other people claim that it's players getting suspended who never return. And I had other Milan players vanish even after I stopped going to the menu between games, so...

I think the patch has came in a squad update, although im not sure, yesterday heskeyw as on the villa team but jo wasnt at everton.

it was manchester City.

Yay, I can join the thread and it's only February, there's hope for further progress yet.

Just finished Lock's Quest - flawed but fun. It's essentially a castle defence style game, surrounded by (what I thought anyway) a decent plot with some twists and turns. You essentially build defences to protect either a fixed point - occasionally more than one - or an individual. It suffers a little from the small screen, and it's not always obvious why you can't place a piece in a particular spot, or move from one, but with walls, towers, 'helper' towers (e.g. to increase the range of the towers) and mines there's plenty to place, and little Lock can attack too. You gain 'source' for killing the enemy, and that dictates what repairs/new building you can do for the new round, for each set of 5 or so 'days'. If anything it's a little easy on normal difficulty, but I had fun with it and still had to try a few of the missions multiple times. A.

Games I've finished this year.

Tomb Raider: Underworld. (360) I enjoyed this mostly - looks nice, is relaxing to play. The story, is, of course, total hooey and there are some issues with scenery snagging. (B+ or A- depending on whether you like TR games)

Resistance 2 (PS3) Shorter but prettier and more varied than the first. There are set pieces rather than big difficulty spikes I found - you have to alter your tactics sometimes to get through sections, but all in all I enjoyed it. What was more noticeable was how insanely contrast the bloody game is. A-

The Darkness (360) Looks nice but there's a slight confusion to me as to what this game is - some of the time it felt like a light smashing similator. It's OK I suppose, but I'd struggle to wholeheartedly recommend it to anybody. It's an FPS with shit weapons, special powers that are generally not much cop, but the lighting looks good. Thankfully it's very short at about 10 hours. C+

GeOW2 (360) Finished this on normal. It's more flawed as a singleplayer than the original game in my mind, as there are too many sections of being a passenger in some cinematic, before being dumped into some mechanic with a difficult to control weapon or vehicle that makes it too much a game of chance - this is a near game breaking fuck up if you want to play the game on the harder difficulty settings. The Horde is very very good, as is coop, but I can't score this anything more than a B+ as I hate games that don't have the courage of their core gameplay and feel it necessary to dilute it with broken bits because they think they have to.

Fallout 3 (360) I haven't finished this, but it gets a nod as I've racked up 95 hours so far and I've put it away until they drop the DLC in March and April

I think there was a similar bug involving Chelsea in FIFA 07.

Finished 'Rainbow Six - Vegas 2' on "realistic" last night. I fair enjoyed it, but the AI are nuisances most of the time and I wish developers would stop putting fucking cutscenes/dialogue just after checkpoints. B+

Finished off 'Prey' a few weeks back while I was without Live. It's good, then tedious, then weird, then good again. Some of the puzzles were clever. B

Did 'CoD2' on Veteran before that, was awesome. Possibly better than CoD4's campaign. A

I forgot that I had this! Got sidetracked by other stuff. It might be that I was on the tedious section though.


Ooh, I bet it's cheap too.

I did a few of the terrorist hunts last night, playing it without a co-op buddy for the first time. Man those AI guys are fucking dumb.

Oh, aye, you'll listen to Wullie; when I say CoD2 is better than CoD4, no one listens!

I like Wullie.

Pre-dick table fix.

COD4 has a very short and quite lame campaign and I agree that COD2 is a better single player game by far.

CoD2 also has a decent multiplayer mode - killcams and all. It's obviously not as good as 4, but it's a 'purer' experience due to no perks.

I think it was about £13 pre-owned when I got it, probably cheaper now.

Camping out with a boom-stick is the easiest way I think, but that's not as much fun as moving around clearing buildings, or playing with other people. There's a few of us up for co-op anyhoo.

You are become wrong, the shatterer of worlds.

CoD2's campaign was decent enough fun, but totally disposable. CoD4 had moments (pretty much the whole sniper mission, the eerie C-130 gunner section) that were amoung the most memorable of any 360 game I've played.

CoD2 is good. And well worth the £6 I paid for it. But I still preferred CoD4. Would very much recommend it though.

A to Rodafowa.

Camping doesn't work a lot of the time, because a load of the terrorists aren't spawned until you enter certain areas of the map. You can't use the AI guys to spawn them, either

Yeah, but COD2 was both more cohesive and immersive. Though COD4 had some epic standout moments it didn't really hang together as a whole for me - it is undoubtedly the better game, but out of the two I would replay COD2 over COD4 iYSWIM.

A combination of being poor and not seeing anything that rings my bell on the newer consoles mean that my Gamecube is still my console of choice, but the problem is games are so bloody cheap I have 60-odd of the things. I've completed some of the easier ones (Gun, the EA James Bond games, Lego Star Wars 1&2, Batman: Vengeance) but I'm going to adopt a strict policy of not buying any more games until I've finished a lot more of the ones I have. I shelled out £30 six months ago for Fire Emblem: Path Of Radiance and have only played it for about half an hour since, ditto Baten Kaitos, Twilight Princess and Paper Mario 2. I'm currently trudging my way through Wind Waker and Tomb Raider Legend again, with occasional bursts of Batman: Rise Of Sin Tzu just to give me something a bit more brainless to do. Although the last boss on that is a bastard. To be honest I now play most games on easy, just so that I can get them out of the way and move onto something else.

Also this: I'm new here. Hullo!

Welcome Killbot. How did you find us?

Via the sadly almost-defunct Board of PPL, where I was known as monkeymilitia. I used to post quite frequently on the Board of Biffo, too. Anyone else kicking about here? (Apart from Russ, obviously. I met Russ once, you know.)

Aye, I have very fond memories of the BoB...the Animals thread especially. Less so of the Board of People as no one ever posted there (and the bloody music...oh dear, the music).

Hello Mr Monkey as well.

Hello hello hello.

Yeah, the BOP got a bit morose toward the end. I think I'll make this my new home now - it'll be nice to be part of an online community that gets more than three posts a week.

Anyways: game chat!

Hello Killbot, it's an honour you chose my thread.

I like this thread. It's making me want to finish off all my 'nearly complete' games so I can post again.(how very sad).

Had a little trot through Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. That will hopefully fall to my dominion soon.

Ironically enough, I think the only game I've ever completed is Fallout 3, and that's the most open ended one I've got. Oh, and the single player of COD4, but that doesn't count. Just for the 360 I've got half a dozen games knocking around, two of which (Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed) I've barely scratched the surface of. I've got a couple of dozen PS2 games I never completed (and likely never will) and countless PC ones. Why do I keep buying new games, eh? Mainly because most games aren't actually good enough to hold your attention all the way through to the end, as they inevitably tend towards the repetitious, or you get to a bit that you get stuck on, and can't be arsed to go back and repeatedly put in the 30 minutes of play it takes to get there, or some such.

Bah.

You never completed Ultima VII? Baldur's Gate? Planescape Torment? Fallout 1 & 2?

Nope. Crap, isn't it?

Get out.

Don't come back until you've finished 10 games.

Do your Lawyer friends know how lame you are?

Yeah. You suck balls.

I'm fickle and easily bored. I never listen to a whole CD, either.

FeeX!

Also, welcome Killbot!

F.E.A.R. - Xbox 360
Yes, it's a old-fashioned corridor shooter. And yes, it's essentially a port of a four year old PC game. Despite all this, I've enjoyed every last minute of it. Dripping with atmosphere, it contains so many good little ideas that it makes wonder why other similar games don't use them.

Rank: A

The only game I've finished this year was Far Cry 2.

Rank: D

Finished Ratchett & Clank Tools of Destruction tonight - Easily worth the tenner I paid but the weapon changing system frustrated me for a while and the levelling up of the enemies was tiresome towards the end. It turned into a war of attrition for the last 3 levels with enemies with really fucking cheap vanishing techniques for evading your fire but ammo replenishment 3 seconds away for rinse and repeat purposes.

Having said that a lot of the combat was satisfying before the weapons got too weedy and there's enough variety in both the weaponry and level design to keep driving you on. Not as good as Metal Arms but still worth of a playthrough. B-

Fear 2 finished

It's Fear again. Rank A.

Really? I'm a bit disappointed if it's basically the same game again. I mean, it was good for a 2005 game, but again in 2009?

Oh, but if you think like this, you're only going to prove yourself correct!

I get the feeling that a lot of people pop in a credit, lose all their lives, and decide they're just inherently rubbish at "these kinds of games" (or, astoundingly, that the game they're playing must be rubbish). What they're failing to appreciate is that the "die/restart/die" model of game design just expects you to get stuck in again - from the beginning, on a new credit - and edge a few screens further each time. It's a far more rewarding and meaningful model than it sounds, and only requires the tiniest bit of patience; two hours with any shmup, for example, will see you well on your way to beating the third or fourth stage, at least. Unless it's by Raizing.

I finished Deadly Creatures today, but only because I was reviewing it for SavyGamer. If I'd been playing it for fun I'd have given up at the awful, awful final boss.

Disappointing game, overall. A few flashes of something better in a mostly average and sometimes broken game.

At least it only lasts four and a half hours.

I know a lot of players who finish playing games, but unfortunately it seems that a lot of developers never finish making them.

I completed Gears of War 2 last night. I really enjoyed it. Rank A or B.

Its very definitely FEAR in spirit. It does bring some new tricks to the party, and has some very freaky imagery in parts. Its good though. I've given the multiplayer a go, and its points based class system looks a bit interesting.

Finished Beautiful Katamari

Pros Wonderfully beautiful game. Makes me realise what I've been missing by buying lots of western games. It's a game that celebrates the polygon if that makes sense. I'm going to keep coming back to it for a ten min pootle around the wonderful game.
Cons: Extremely short with little to drive me to replay (I was hoping to unlock a mode that has no time limit so I could just potter and have fun - but no dice it seems. Contains NAMCO'S IMMENSELY OFFENSIVE METHOD of hiding lots of content on the disk and asking me to pay again for it. For fucks sake most of the level map stays empty when you've finished the game because you haven't bought those levels. I'm amazed I've ranked it so high because of this but still I give it a...

RANK: C (Buy it for cheap - DO NOT BUY DLC).

Guitar Hero World Tour - Finished Career mode on medium (just on guitar) and have no desire to ever play it again. Mediocre song list and a general lack of atmosphere when compared to Rock Band 2.

Rank - C

Call of Duty 4 - Only bought it to play in single player and while that was short and scripted, it was still fun. Someone's bought it from me now so I'll not get chance to try it multiplayer.

Rank - B

Warriors Orochi 2 - Finished this in January I think. Takes Warriors Orochi, adds a few nice touches but then takes away a lot of the fun too. No longer do you have to meet certain conditions to unlock characters - you'll get every single one by just playing through the story mode. There are fewer levels too, 'compensated' by Dream Mode in which a load of the levels are locked until you've ground away at levelling up a load of the characters for no reason at all.

Rank - C

I completed Mirror's Edge on Sunday (story mode).

I'd have got on with it a lot better if all the cops were Superninjapolis that chased you over roofs and gave you a good old fashioned kicking when they caught you. Instead some bright spark decided to make them more realistic, so the majority are lazy pricks that don't move far and shoot on site. Now I know how the poor bugger that was shot while running for the tube felt, piss off and leave me alone to jump around on rooftops pig.

That said, I've started on the Time Trials and they seem more my kind of thing.

My mate wants this back soon, I may have to buy it.

Finished Kane and Lynch: Dead Men

The controversy behind it made me want to play it. So I expected it to be bad & blooming hell it really is bad. The worst part about it is that if they had delayed a few months and focused on getting the controls (and especially cover) to work then it would have been a fun little game. They couldn't have fixed the unlikeable characters and rubbish story though.

Still wanted to play it to the end though which says something. Some nice set pieces.

RANK: D

I got as far as the third mission where you have to get an womin out of a Japanese bar and got killed repeatedly. Haven't had the compulsion to load it again.

itsallwater and I played it on co-op but kept getting killed in the bank heist mission. I then sold it to some first-class sukka.