spatular

£40 in blockbuster and extra motion + for £15

i did that by pure luck then - i put the meat in the pot in the kitchen, then put the yellow flower in the pot too, then recovered the meat from the pot and fed it to the dogs - i have no ides why i did it but it worked, although i thought it was cooking it that made it work and not the flower, so errr yeah i'm glad of the hint system too! last time i played was a while ago but i'd just started the insult sword fighting, the training machine is ace.

is that cab yours? used to like defender on the atari 2600, but never heard of sinistar, sounds interesting! i guess modern shooters would still fit into that twitch games thing?

i'm starting to hate this a bit now, the platforming works brilliantly but when they add rockets and lasers all over the place it makes it seem more like luck to get past the level

could be the battery, if it's a rechargeable one and a few years old it might be knackered, try putting some standard batteries in it to check maybe?

have to agree with the brilliantness of the nobi nobi boy track, also really liked the f-zero and zelda ones, and all the rest were good too, not a bad song this week imo

that stick looks pretty cool Jimbo! should work on a pc no problem. let us know how you get on with it. i've tried various sticks but never do as well as with a pad. i don't like the streetfighter pads for shooters (great for fighters mind), prefer the standard one, but maybe that's just because i'm used to it. i tried playing deathsmiles for a while with the streetfighter pad and started to think it was ok and i'd gotten used to it, but then tried it with dodonpachi doj, which is much harder and requires much more precise movement and i was finding it difficult and was blaming the pad for a lot of deaths so ended up going back to the standard 360 pad, which is still not ideal, i'd prefer a saturn pad any day. maybe i just need to stick at it with the streetfighter pad a bit more. as it's probably dependent on what your used to rather than what's better as there's a dude on the smups forum who has unbelievable scores on dodonpachi using a keyboard and someone else who uses a standard ps2 pad.

Whooo, nice work on giving it a go guys the start of the second level is pretty tricky, i find it's best to stick to one colour and move from side to side taking out the enemies before they get near the middle, when you go to the edge watch out for enemies from the bottom of the screen too. after that bit when some baddies circle round you it's best to kill them slowly to avoid the next, much harder, pattern. like illdog says it'll get easier with practice, also worth pointing out that it's best to start off on easy mode, it's still far from easy but you don't need to worry about when you kill anemies like you do in normal mode. watching some of the replays will help too

i've never played a game like this before either! although might have played a demo of one of the later monkey island games. you can enable subtitles in the new version too, i'll be sticking to the new version

played some of this last night, switching back to the original graphics is a shock, i didn't realise how old it was got a bit stuck early on, which i guess i was expecting, the hint system seems to work pretty well, giving you a more detailed clue each time you use it, although while working on what the hints were telling me - messing around i randomly used which i needed for a completely different part of the quest so, unless someone tells you to do that later, it's pretty stupid. it is funny though which makes up for any annoyances so far

cool, i don't feel quite so stupid buying the 360 version now. people who got thoes cheap american points will be able to get it even cheaper too.

that's a good point, i suspect your right, i forgot it was on pc too and bought it last night on the 360 but didn't get chance to try it. still £5.71 isn't bad, how much is it on pc?

i don't know why but i thought this comment was about metal arms - i seem to remember some formation dancing in that? That is Metal Arms. I think the there were two big surprises in that game. One was the sweary guy, pretty much every time he spoke it was bleeped out, and two, how frigging hard it was. Even on the easiest setting I only just managed to finish it. cool, i thought my mind was playing tricks on me, it's ages since i've played it, great game, and yeah i found it really hard too! i've never played psychonauts, although i do own it, stupid 360 backwards compatible except through vga

i don't know why but i thought this comment was about metal arms - i seem to remember some formation dancing in that?

edit - turns out i'm an idiot and have no idea how it works! i played the demo and it lagged a bit, was occasionally fun, and then froze, so sort of put me off, might still get it at some point though as i'm sure it'll be loads of fun played with friends.

i was scared too, when it first came out on the gamecube over here i'd read reviews and thought it might be too hard and i might hate it. most reviews do say that it's not for everyone. but i took a chance and it really paid off, i do think it's worth the 400 points just to see if you like it, its the game that got me into 2d shooters in the first place. regarding the difficulty which seems to put people off? i really don't think the easy mode is that bad although it's still hard it's not as difficult as stuff like R-Type or Gradius (imo anyway), but people don't seem to see thoes games as super hard, or do they? the lack of suicide bullets from enemies on easy mode makes it much less mind bending and so a lot more accesible too. i admit on stage 2 on normal mode i really struggle with changing colour to dodge the normal bullets while also thinking about when/where i can kill enemies so their sicide bullets don't mess me up - i probably just need to watch some more replays to see how it's done! someone on the shmup forum also made the point that at 400 points (comparable price to a magazine or a mcdonalds) it's worth it just to download and watch some of the top replays as they are amazing. also it really helps to watch some replays as it's part puzzle game, some sections that seem really hard are much easier if you have an idea what to do - the replays on the gamecube disk helped me a lot.

yeah fair enough you've already got it, i think the queen would be ok with that. although having it on xbla you'd play it more and become super leet at it, just think how awesome that would be! </pimp mode> sorry i feel it's my duty to try and promote it as much as possible!

i've not been doing a good job updating this...anyway some more great news for japanese 360 owners - Espgaluda 2 might be ported - it's awesome. and anyone not buying Ikaruga for 400 points should write to the queen apologising.

played this some more and it's so annoying, the missiles are far too agile, but i can't stop playing, strange.

nice podcasting dudes Hendo having to pronounce that 360 shooter made me glad i bought it as i've hardly played it. public service announcement/letter to ann robinson - Ben mentions every extend extra, he's on about every extend extra extreme (E4) on the 360 which is rubbish. the psp game every extend extra is brilliant and plays completely differently. just wanted to point that out so people don't get mixed up i was pretty angry with the 360 version for even using the same name.

i enjoyed it, am rubbish at general knowledge though so was lucky to be in a party with people shouting out the answers on my own i'd have probably just got annoyed by answering everything wrong.

it's every friday and saturday for the next few weeks, no prizes this week but the prize for the last week of the beta is a car!!! i'm going to be giving it a go tonight

i'd be up for some online coop any specific time/day planned?

i was going to try this (well i did try the tutorial) but there were loads of problems with people not being able to connect to games so i just gave it a miss. apparently at one point they actually ran out of spaces on the servers so it was impossible for anyone else to play and now they've added more servers or something. still it sounds good when it works

thanks, just did the first lot of levels again and it worked, glad i didn't play any more last night now. edit - just did that master control level did take about 1h mind!