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The Half Life 2 documentary made me start up a new save on that game, but then I decided why not play the original. I've played it before but it was on PS2, which has huge auto aim and kinda comes from a point in time where this genre wasn't well served at all on console (arguably, I'd still say this is the case, but PS2 was so much worse). I put it on hard mode, cause I beat Doom Eternal like that so surely I'll be fine. Anyway this game is a dick, it comes from a school of design that feels so odd to return to cause it's really unfair but also that is the point. Not in a Dark Souls way, it's more like it's trying to be an action horror comedy or something. Black Mesa is out to kill Gordon all the time, walk down a hallway and shit is blowing up. They hide things out of sight and then jump you with vortigaunts on both sides and you die. You quick save a lot. There's a lot of 'ffs, how was I supposed to know the platform would crumble beneath me into a room of headcrabs for guaranteed damage or that the elevator would break and drown me in radioactive piss'. But you just continue on anyway I think it's cool though cause it makes Black Mesa feel so dangerous. It helps an old game like this still feel immersive cause the place is trying to fucking kill you all the time, whether it's the extra terrestrials you imported via the bit of cheese you pushed into the laser or cause of the facility's in built security systems. Sometimes when talking about stuff that's old and influential it's easy to file it away as 'important, but not worth going back to'. But a lot of the time the reason that something is influential is cause it was super fucking good and that quality isn't always something which fades over time, even as other things build upon it. The approach to set pieces in Half Life is a lot purer than modern games cause it's always happening around you and you are always in control, you have to react to what's going on and adapt. It doesn't feel like it's awkwardly pausing the bit where you play the game for an interactive cutscene or anything like that. The way it combines combat, exploration, platforming, environment hazards, horror, it reminds me of RE4 in how it constantly introduces new gimmicks and knows when to retire them just in time for something new and fresh. Constant forward progression that always feels satisfying It also still plays really well, far faster than Half Life 2 and a billion times faster than Alyx. I think once they started fucking around with physics in 2 it slowed the pace of gameplay by like a third, at least. Became more about interactivity and puzzling than run and gun violence and explosions. I like how you have to chuck grenades into unknown areas to smoke out enemies, it's more a strategic weapon than it is a damaging one cause of the potential to get sucked punched by some bullshit you don't see. The trap mines are also fun to play with. I'm at the Surface Tension level and will probably beat it over the weekend, then onto HL2. I'll have to play Portal 2 at some point cause that's one I've never completed on any platform. I do remember the final chapter or two being a pile of shit on PS2 so I hopefully it's less of a hassle here, probably not.

Not started it yet, as I've said elsewhere I'm still reluctant to as I've not finished P3 (think I'm half way...) and not even started The Answer chapter on the FES edition. But I am listening to the soundtrack CD that comes with it, and its every bit as good as the soundtrack for Persona 3 was with Reach Out To The Truth being my favourite track so far.

I picked this up the other week, it's something I've wanted to play since it came out, but not enough to get it when it was significantly cheaper, so I thought I'd better make a start before I forgot I even owned it. I'm early in, but it's fun. It's not as tight a game as you'd hope, it's not Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. It's a little mashy, though it's not a musu, it reminds me a bit of the Berserk game, although that might be because it just really reminds me of Berserk (man haunted by demons slaughters them by night). You can either attack with your sword arms or... actually I should explain that. Your father made a deal with the devil whereby he'd get power and they'd get the body of his first born, which ended up being you. Hard to feel sorry for the dad in this but I think you're supposed to, anyway, that means that they take pretty much all your body parts. You're now tracking down the demons that posses your missing body parts to claim them back As you don't have arms, as such, you have blades instead, and can attack quickly with flurries, spinning attacks that damage everything around you. Or you can equip your fake arms and attack in a more considered and stronger fashion with a samurai sword. I ended up quite liking this attack style, but I suspect the faster and wider attack might be better for bosses. There's a dodge, but not in the Bayonetta style unfortunately, more in a strafe and roll kind of a way Most enemies are really easy, there's loads of save points, a reasonable amount of health drops, but it's fun. To a large extent that's because of the story and general nonsense that's going on, so it might not be able to hold your attention depending on how long it is, but it's made a good first impression I've started a let's play of this (that loses a bit of gameplay towards the end of it) that I'll put below. I'm a bit wary of spamming the forum with stuff I've decided to capture, but as I was starting a thread I thought I'd post it, hope no one minds

Played about an hour of it so far, and its pretty much the PS2s version of Zelda. Its weird because there is something stopping me from getting into it, its taking me a good 20 minutes each play to be used to it and then once ive done a major thing I dont feel inclined to get on to the next one... The graphical style is nice, but just nice, its so blurry that I think thats one of the things that requires you to spend a few minutes getting used to before you are happy with it...I think it could have quite easily be done on the Gamecube. There are one or two standout minutes in the graphical style that make you appreciate the difference, but on the whole I kind of feel like im playing an Xbox game without my glasses on. The story and setting are pretty good, like I said theres a bit of Zelda in there and also it reminds me of Goemon with its quirkyness and ecsentuated characters.

I did look for an old thread but it looks like one doesn't exist. I got it the other night on the Switch since it's the version with the free style switching. It's a cool idea that's in later DMC games and I thought it may be fun in this game. In the original you picked a style at the start of a mission. Basically the styles are Sword Master, Gunslinger, Trickster and Royal Guard. They all give you different abilities. The first two are fairly self explanatory while trickster is mostly about dodging and royal guard is a parry system. I do have a bit of a problem with it. It's just the way it levels. In later games you upgrade the styles with red orbs (which give you more moves), the same way as everything else, but here I think it upgrades by how much you use it. So I'm not getting the freedom I'd like without spending a lot of time in the Bloody Palace with the main goal of using a particular style a lot. So that's kinda disappointing since I forgot how it worked. I've forgotten a lot of stuff to be honest. I was having a hoot at first. I sunk in four hours in one session, going along quite well which surprised me as going back to Bayonetta kicked my arse. DMC3 is easier than I remember but then I got to a succubus type lady boss, which I think you get the guitar weapon from but I just can't seem to beat her. I don't seem to be doing any damage but she wrecks you with some of her attacks. I call bullshit, I think she's busted. But I'm sure I did beat her back in the day as I remember messing around with that guitar weapon. How I did it, I have no idea.

Absolutely loving this so far. Really glad I did pick it up because its been a joy. All the good things I remember about it are there and not many of the bad. I think a lot of it back in the day was me not being that good a player and not paying attention but so far I havnt had any issues. Im actually enjoying the blitzball element of it which I didnt last time round. I have to say, Sly, I think you might like elements of this, although its probably a bit too story heavy to be the best converter in the series.

or Dragon Quest V as it was. I've only played about an hour, so in rpg terms I'm probably still well into the intro. In fact I'm a little kid at the minute and the box art shows you as a teenager, so I'm guessing there's a split at some point where you grow up. Gameplay is just Dragon Quest, except maybe even more (how to say this without it sounding like a dig at it)... quirky. As you walk along you get into random fights, in these fights you get a first person view with the enemies all lined up, then you select attack/defend/magic/items/flee/etc. Thing is, if you're faced with say, 2 slimes and a rat, you can select to attack the rat or both the slimes i.e. it groups enemies of a similar type so you cant choose to attack a specific enemy. It's not a massive problem, but it does mean that your damage is more spread out over multiple turns. I think it's probably because you're a kid early on, but you dont die when you're defeated, instead you keep everything you've earned and end up back at the town where you're told to go and rest. It's pretty good for easing you in, I doubt I'd have got through the first cave otherwise, but I still circled around near the town to get into fights (before going home and resting) to level up my second character. The scripts really good too, I've come accross a character who talks like the count from Seseme street, and a guy I think is supposed to be spanish, but his accent is italian I'm really enjoying it so far, I guess if you've played loads of DQ it's just more of the same, but I've only ever played 2 of them and never got all that far in either.

I got a real taste back for music games (can't think why) so I bought a new shiny pair of headphones and chucked myself off to work. Tried the old favourites of Ouenden, Ouenden 2, EBA and Daigasso but nothing sucked me in, so I fired up this little beauty. I'd only played it once when I first bought it, which was the tail-end of 2006. So I blitzed through this supposedly tough as nails game wondering why everyone's a pussy at it, until I got to the last stage, which is where I'm still stuck now. Christ it's tough!

It's brilliant, just brilliant. I should just leave it at that because thats what it is. I'm going to be honest and say the story is like the worst Jackie Chan film you've ever seen and the graphics and level design are that of budget title. The game at it's core though, it's spectacular. The combo system will be familiar to anyone who's played Devil May Cry but the difference here is that you have loads of indervidual moves that can be assigned to make your own combos which intern lets you be creative with beating the fuck out of any hunk, midget, fat bloke, Mexican wrestling Gorilla, whip wielding seductress or sexual deviant that gets in your way. It's just a game that either has you laughing at the ridiculousness of the characters and story or even at stuff in game. There was a part where there were some knife throwing shits on a Roman type piller... in a wild west style level... and I destroyed the pillers with my fists and as the knife guy fell to the ground I timed my charged kick perfectly so he hit my foot before he hit the ground which launched him fifty metres westward. To be honest I am playing it on easy and I'm still getting my arse handed to me but it's never unfair, you always know what you should of done so you never have to replay sections much. You really have to get into the depth it has, all block breaking moves, charge attacks and juggling are all there ready to be used and I suppose, exploited. Anyone into action games of this ilk should get it.. now. It's now knocked off Ninja Gaiden as my favourite modern beat'em'up. I am now really, really looking forward to both Madworld and Bayoneta now. Also includes kicking people in the balls in a Rick Flair stylee' and suplexing grunts (or a Mexican wrestling Gorilla's) faces into the sand... like I said, brilliant, just brilliant.

I started this on Friday with zero expectations but, as easily pleased boy is, i was pleased with it, easily. Its basically GTA at school - steal bikes instead of cars, shoot slingshots instead of guns, kiss young girls instead of raping/murdering prostitutes. As usual in these sorts of games (with me anyway) the plot soon became a distant memory as i chose instead to see how many steps i could olly up on my skateboard and to see how many people would fight me at the carnival. Its got its own version of Paperboy in there too, im lovin that at the moment, as well as the Go Karts and the Bike Races. Oooh, and the Lawnmowing jobs too, awesome!

I'm playing through Shadow of the Colossus while I'm between games, note I'm not playing through Ico because I don't think it's very good. The shadows snatching Ico away (or whatever she's called) gets actively gets in the way of your goal, which is the point of them, but it doesn't make things any more fun. The HD'ed up graphics do look a lot better but they don't fix everything. You still clip through things, textures and landscape still loads in, but it's impressive how much detail was in the ps2 version that we just couldn't see. The chief thing the graphics have sorted out is the framerate which varied from an annoyance to a real problem, now it runs nice and solid. Going back what I hadn't really anticipated was having issues with the controls, but some of it has now become slightly counter-intuitive. For example, pulling yourself up to a ledge needs you to press the jump button, not up, same with correcting your position, less seems to be more. What it means is sometimes climbing goes really smoothly, sometimes it's an absolute ball ache. I struggled so much on the first colossus that I assumed I'd forgot the controls, but then all of a sudden I could just climb freely. I'm getting through it quicker than I expected, the game clock had me at less than 2 hours and I've beat 4 colossi, but I guess I've still got vague memories of how to beat them

Started playing this last night, only spent a couple of hours on it, but it is fantastic. I think in the two hours i was on, maybe 45 mins was actual playing, but i don't care i love what Kojima does. Its full of nods and references to the older, but new in time line games, subtle things like to origins of snakes bandanna, a fantastic credit sequence that is a complete James Bond rip off. It's taken me a while to get into the MGS mindset, the controls don't feel quite right, but they do feel like Metal Gear if that makes sense. It has aged pretty well as well, the graphics feel like a ps2 game, but i very good one, i imagine it would look great played on a standard def telly. Also kudos on the sound as well. I'll post something more in-depth and less rambly once i've played some more.

I know at least me and Chin are dying for a sequel to this, without giving anything away, the ending makes you go "Aaaaaaargghhh! Tell me more!" Not in a bad way, just that the story has only just begun, shame it didn't sell that well. I bone this game and I fell in love with the whole atmosphere, it's great just wandering round looking at stuff. It's very much a Zelda clone but when it's done this well with a pretty good and fairly original storyline (plus, female lead, pretty but not Lara Croft phwoar, etc and non-violent too) you have to tip your hat. For some reason the story and setting reminded me of the first Oddworld game. I need to play this again, but haven't been able to since I completed it as I lent it to a mate (that I don't see often) along with the Twin Snakes.