Be Excellent To Each Other

I finished it co-op. Found it quite fun, but hardly great.

*

*goes off to look for his own sukka*

*still glad we swapped, but yeah I think I'm going to sell it on if that is ok with you myp?

It is yours to do as you see fit, sir.

Good-oh!

Might keep it long enough to try out the online mode fragile alliance - cos that sounds quite nifty...

That was the best part of it.

Fragile Allegiance > Fragile Alliance.

Fraggle Allegiance > Fragile Allegiance.

Well I finished Medal of Honor - Allied Assualt. One of the first games I finished in ages.

Just a few missions into Spearhead now..

Finished Uncharted:Drake's Fortune on Saturday - Fair to say the prettiest console game I have played with a combination of sprawling vistas, spookily lit catacombs and dense foliage coupled with extremely lifelike animation and water. On top of the general graphical wankery the game was fun to play without getting frustrating at any point other than the FUCKING STUPID quicktime events which are never less than shite on any game ever. Yes than also means you Shenmue and that fucking Krauser fight in RE4.

Overall A-

yes uncharted is great, pity about the ending though, easily one of best 3 games on it although I say that without having played mine for about 9 months now.

Skate 2 is done and dusted in single and multiplayer mode.

Did all the achvs in Sega Collection Thing Pack but didn't finish anything on there.

Finished the story mode in Eat Lead. Won't be maxing it out but it's not very good but the humour (all game-related) is reasonably well judged.

Finally finished 'The Last Remnant', god knows why I've spent so long on it as it basically plays itself.

A solid C then Morte?

Once you get into it, it's almost hypnotic. I could only really recommend it to the hardcore JRPG crowd though. Oh and it involves a ridiculous amount of grinding as well...it made me long for the days of Lost Odyssey.

...wait they do hardcore JRPGs?

Just finished GTA4 and Mass Effect in story mode. Enjoyed the end of both, Mass Effect in particular has got a lot to build upon for the next game.

and they are going to unleash that on the PC. It will probably sell nothing and they're going to accuse the pc of being a dead platform

Finished Call of Duty : World at War for PS3 t'other day. I'm glad I only parted with Goozex points rather than proper cash for it as although it was good it was somewhat short. Jack Bauer and Dracula do voices and both are suitably indestructible. Flame Throwers and Molotovs are entertaining additions to the weapon set and burning a Japanese sniper out of a tree is very satisfying. Usual Treyarch problems of snaggable scenery, obvious scripting triggers and idiotic AI don't blight the game too much but drag it below the standards of Infinity Ward's efforts.

However - Nazi Zombies is a fucking great laugh. I play split screen with the boy and it's a complete hoot, tense and tactical and the sound of Zombie heads exploding is a sound I will never grow tired of.

Overall B-

I actually finished the main story of GTAIV this lunchtime. Overall I'd give the game a B- for story - it simply wasn't gripping enough to make me play it when it first came out, hence my leaving it for several months before coming back to it. I'll give it a B for things to do - there's certainly a lot to do, but most of the friends and the limited interactions actually get old really quickly.
I'll give it an S for world realisation - it feels very close, in game terms, to a living environment, that's simply huge and it's actually the most beguiling part of the whole package - it's just fun to just hang in the city.

Some of the activities could be more fun - the vehicle control could have done with being tightened up then things like the races and vehicle nicking side missions would be more compelling.

Anyway, I don't feel any urge to go and complete all the myriad side missions, though some I might have a go at. However, I like the idea of exploring the city more thoroughly. I think that was the essential dichotomy for me - stunning environment that I never felt entirely comfortable interacting with and that's down to the control interface as much as anything.

So, I reckon a solid B++ overall and another game "done" this year.

Agreed, I enjoyed GTAIV story mode, but felt no compulsion to do the other side missions. It's a phenomenal creation of a world though. Occasionaly I reboot the game to tootle around for 30 minutes and it's a stunning achievement.

Finished Prince of Persia 360 today.

For the ~15 quid it costs I enjoyed it a lot. And it had a great ending too. [spoiler] I particularly like the fact that over on Penny-arcade I've just read people complain that the prince did that in the end. He didn't you fools. You did. The credits had run, and you had finished. You could have just turned the game off. But you didn't. You did that instead. Liked that a lot.

Not getting the DLC though as I'm sticking it on Goozex to get more gamez.

Not sure what to rate it. Either a high C or a low B. Might write a UpToJump article about it and Mirror's Edge if I can be arse, because it's been making me think a lot.

[/ramble]

Finished Bioshock, and rather enjoyed it. It wasn't particularly long but it held my attention 'til the end, and I felt satisfied and happy upon finishing it.

Only got it yesterday, but I played for a disgusting number of hours today. Missed a Little Sister somewhere, which is slightly annoying, but never mind.

Not sure whether or not I'll play it again, so I've stuck it back on Goozex. But I'm at the end of a fairly large queue of offers so I'll probably have it for a while should I feel like picking it up again.

A solid B, I reckon.

Urgh, up late because I got drawn into Fable 2. But just polished it off. Really good game. Amazed really, especially after how much I hated the first Fable. Glad I gave it the chance now.

Solid A Well worth the £15 - £18 it costs now days.

I had a load of comments about the end here, but I'm posting them in the fable thread instead.

Finished Mirror's Edge last night - some broken bits and some really excellent bits, the plot was a load of nonsensical wank and the ending was such a massive letdown it almost made me mark it down but overall there's lots of promise for a sequel. Make the fighting better with counters and the ability to lock on to enemies, lose the indoor bits and do some on-line races and it would easy make an A grade.

Overall B

On the ending

I thought it was strangely similar to uncharted's ending and just as dissappointing.

Agree muchly - at least the characters in Uncharted had some hint of charisma so the cut scene which followed tempered it somewhat rather than me not caring in the slightest like at the end of Mirror's Edge.

Resident Evil! FIVE! completed. A grade.

Finished Time Hollow on DS recently. I really enjoyed it. It was quite possibly the least challenging game I've ever played but it was still lovely. Very short though. May review it.

Completed Battlefield: Bad Company just now. Mixed thoughts.

On the one hand, it's a fun shooty game with great humour and an interesting story. It looks beautiful and sounds fantastic, and the characters are individually memorable and well thought out.

On the other hand it's often infuriatingly unfair, with AI who can spot you from miles away, rarely seem to miss, and always seem to know where you are; RPGs fly toward you with little notice, and are often one-shot kills, while you struggle to stay alive, running around having no chance to equip anything but your healing syringe.

Dying results in you being sent back to your last save-point, which could be miles away, except your actual progress is saved; enemies you killed stay dead, and vehicles you used are left where you died, often leaving you to travel back on foot. From the constant barrage of psychic AI, you will die a lot.

Overall, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I enjoyed it when it was being fair, but it was really annoying when it wanted to be. I'd like to complete it again on hard, but I don't think I've got the patience; Normal difficulty had me swearing enough.

I wonder what the other Battlefield games are like.

You do know its best in multi, don't you?

Oh no doubt, but the single-player stands on its own unlike, say, UT3.

Right I've won the game with every civ and by every win condition, therefore I consider I've 'finished' Civilisation Revolution.

I quite liked the ending. I'm tired of hugely-drawn-out virtually indestructible final fights, so it was a nice change. The final cut-scene was great, too.

I agree with Grim...

it was just too ordinary, they could of made it short and spectacular lke the just cause ending.

Exactly this^

I completed it after many frustrating bits where you'd get blown up by a tank many miles away and have no chance of shooting it, bits like that took ages. I liked it, but still didnt compare to CoD4 as I dont think any FPS will until this november.
I didnt really like the multi, was too slow and the maps were too big for me. I dunno, I traded it in not long after completing it

As do I.

Finished Strangehold.

The controls were a bit sticky (it badly, badly needed a L4D-style "turn 180 degrees" button), it's a bit too difficult to tell exactly where you're being shot from, the snipers can just FUCK OFF, it's a bit stingy with the Nerd-O-Score, there are some absolutely brutal difficulty spikes and it's a bit samey. And a lot exactly the same as Max Payne.

Good fun for the pittance you'll pay for it, though. It's only game ever made where the stuff you can do in the game is more awesome than the stuff you can do in the cutscenes. The first time I slid down a bannister, shot a sign above a mook's head that dropped down to kill him then dived off the bannister onto a wheelie-trolley and shot two more mooks in the face I'd had my fiver's worth.

Rank: C

ARG!

I did it on hard & it wasn't that bad, just keep using the heartstabby-twangdoodler & you'll be fine. Pissed me off that I'd have to go through it again to get the achievements for normal though. Also, it's the first Battlefield game I've played where the campaign has been better than the multiplayer.

Seriously? Completing it on Hard doesn't unlock the Normal achievements??

I'm almost sure it did.

If it did, I never found it.

So far this year I have...

- Finished the main quest in Fallout 3. Awesome game: S.

- Played and finished Quantum of Solace. Meh. Like the film it's based on. C.

- Finally got round to playing Call Of Duty 4. Very good and a proper challenge in places, though it didn't make me do a rude mess in my trousers like it seemed to for some. I'll have to try the multiplayer at some point: A

- Finished Resident Evil 5 and enjoyed it muchly: A.

- Got to the credits of GH: World Tour: B.

- Got to the credits of Rock Band 2: S.

- Finished the single-player campaign on Killzone 2 and just got to the Lieutenant rank in Warzone - easily one of the best FPS games I've played: S.

- Got all but one achievement on Outrun Online Arcade - still some of the best fun you can have with fully optional trouser arrangement: S+

I've got a metric fuckton of games at home that I haven't even played, much less finished. Among these are Dead Space, Devil May Cry 4, Uncharted, R&C Tools of Destruction and the new Prince of Persia - plus I've still got to kick it back to the old skool bruv with Ico, Shadow of the Collossus and Persona 3 FES all queued up for playage.

Finished Conan last night, and it was mostly quite brilliant aside from pretty much every single boss fight, which is just a case of learning attack patterns then entering a world of QTEs for each.

The basic combat is varied, fun, and never gets old. You dash about wielding a range of weapons, unleashing punishing blow after blow upon your foes, taking off hundreds of limbs and occasionally chopping them completely in two. There's a decent enough variety of foes to pit yourself up against, though the humanoid ones are much more fun than the animals, who just annoyed me with their shitness.

There are a fair few platform-jumping sections which, for the most part, were pleasant, easy and short enough. Occasionally I'd get to one where good timing was essential, or one where I had to repeat the same section over and over again when the tolerances for jumping seemed a bit too tight. Overall, not a horrible addition to the game, and it allowed the levels to span a much larger scope then a simple plane.

The bosses were a let-down, though thankfully most were over fairly quickly. Each boss has several stages of depleting a health bar, completing a series of Quick Time Events, rinse and repeat for a slightly different form etc. Some were more fun than others (the Elephant and Squid, I reckoned were quite fun) but for the most part, I was wishing each away so I could resume my barbaric slaughter of the common foes.

The last boss, however, had me infuriated more than any game ever has. I really, really didn't enjoy it in the slightest; it was long, boring and buggy. There are two stages for this guy, each repeated three(!) times, and each very crap; each time having to deplete his health bar before another chain of QTEs. Except for the first, third and fifth stages the first couple of health-depletions didn't trigger the event and I was left facing a small cutscene of the boss handing my ass to me, followed by him regaining another half of his health back. Rinse, repeat, until the game stopped bugging out and it would let me do the stupid pressy pressy thing of the buttons.

The last boss fight really is a shame; it gave me a massive hatred of the game, and left me feeling quite annoyed from what was an otherwise completely ace and enjoyable game. I'd love to play it again were it not for the QTE-ridden boss scenes ruining the overall wonder.

Can't say you weren't warned.

Hateful bastard, isn't he? Just like the perfectly-judged, perfectly fair final boss in God Hand, only the exact opposite.

I certainly can't! But I wasn't expecting one so hateful, buggy, long, boring and annoying. Stop giving games shit final bosses, games designers!

edit: and now it's on its way to Runcle. Enjoy, chap! Shame it's only 150 points in my pocket.

Finished Mirror's Edge.

'Finished' Left 4 Dead

'Finished' Civ Rev

'Finished' SF4

Finished GoW2

Finished Crackdown (that's be last year though, I guess)

Finished "CoD: WaW" last night, it was good fun but the difficulty levels seemed to be a bit skew-wiffy. Normal's too easy & hardened was either a kick in the baws or a slightly challenging walk in the park dependant on mission. There's also a fair few bugs in the campaign where one of your squad will get stuck meaning you either have to look for them to complete/continue while being shot to fuck & beyond or restart the checkpoint, annoyingly these bugs tended to happen at/near the end of difficult missions.

The Yanks were typically over the top, shouting about sticking their winkies in their sister's apple pie & so on.
The Russians were more likeable until they decided to slaughter everyone in sight as they stormed Berlin (presumably this was their war does terrible things message, or maybe not).

The last missions where you storm Berlin & ultimately the Reichstag were the greatest missions in the game, but were over way too quickly for me


I'd give it a B for campaign & I'll get back to yies about the multiplayer but it looks promising with the return of War (think domination, but in a linear tug o' war fashion) & now Hardcore War!

EDIT: They've made an arse of the War gametype. Twats.

Tom Clancy Presents: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. By Tom Clancy
(Finished campaign on Hard)

It's an arcade flight sim in a contemporary setting. And it wants to be Ace Combat 6 so badly it hurts, right down to the pre-mission target-percentage breakdown, the post-mission cinematic replay and the three camera view options, each practically identical to its equivalent in AC6.

Here are the things it does better than Ace Combat 6: more planes (but they all feel pretty much exactly the same to fly), external fly-by "assistance off" view that looks hugely cool (but is completely unnecessary and massively difficult to control), your plane carries anti-missile flares (not that you'll have any left when you need them because some idiot mapped "deploy flares" to a click of the control stick, something that's incredibly easy to do accidentally when engaged in intense flight maneuvers) no portentous and jarring cut-scenes about the hideousness of war (instead there’s a staggeringly nonsensical plot about a corporation as lacking in business-sense as they are in morals), moderately groovy R6: Vegas/CoD4 XP-O-Gain level system (which mostly only unlocks new planes which, as previously stated, aren't much more than reskins), looks hugely pretty in places (but extremely ropy in others - the Chicago level with the skyscrapers jarringly plonked down on what looks like a perfectly flat Google Earth map will take you back to the worst sins of mid-nineties flight-simmmery) and its whole campaign is playable in co-op (actually, that one's pretty much an unreserved yay).

Here are the things it does worse than AC6: smaller maps featuring smaller, practically linear missions with little tactical thought either necessary or, generally, possible rendering pretty much the whole game as just a glorified shooting-gallery. See enemy, press A to fire a missle, done done and I'm onto the next one. Mildly idiotic targetting system (HINT: if I've got AAMs armed, I don't want you to lock onto ground targets I can't hit do I? Well, DO I?), mildly idiotic control system (weapon switch is mapped to D-pad, meaning you need to take your "hands" off the "control stick" to use it. This is an issue if, f'rinstance you want to switch to dogfighting missiles because oh, I don't know, you're in a BLOODY DOGFIGHT). Mildly idiotic camera (you can either have "standard", in which case the vertical axis is the wrong way round or "inverted", where the horizontal axis is the wrong way round).

If the flight scenes in Top Gun mildly arouse you, you'll have some fun with HAWX. It's not a bad game by any means, it's just shallow, workmanlike, a bit bland and lacking in charm. It's like a tribute band - the songs are still good but the magic's not quite there. HAWX is the Bootleg Ace. It's the Counterfeit Combat. It's the Tesco Value Ace Combat 6.

Rank: C