The Gaming Week thread

[Cyberpunk]

I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Batman, be sure to post your thoughts in the impressions thread!

Dude, Scribblenauts? It's not even officially released in the States until Tuesday. I'm not sure I'll end up getting it either, will wait on some reviews. It's been hyped to high heavens, and I can imagine it becoming frustrating when you try a thousand possibilities to to successfully finish a level, and none of them work as you're not using the 'correct' object. I know there's meant to be multiple outcomes to finishing a stage, but I reckon some levels could get infuriating.

Scribblenauts is an independant release on Romulation, and has been uploaded early. However, it's the full game, and proving to be quite a lot of fun.

[retroed]

Yeah, I know it's been Yarr'd and uploaded early on the high seas. But we don't talk about that. I think the general rule here, and the point I was trying to put across, is to not post about games that aren't officially released yet, or those that have not been acquired legitimately.

[Cyberpunk]

Ok Bud. Point taken. I promise to be a good boy in the future, lol.

[illdog]

Havent updated for a while, i forget about this thread.

After fisting Batman: Arkham Asylum (running around in a rubber suit with a young boy), i decided to delve into my collection and play some older shit. Pokemon Pearl is a game ive sorely neglected and it was time to say im sorry like Tracy Chapman. Im loving it all over again, you get this weird positive Pokemon feeling and its mo addictive than Sanders secret blend of 12 herbs and spices. Im giving the weirdness of Flower, Sun & Rain a little break because i think its secretly trying to make me kill someone i love in real life.

So when im not on the pan having a Poke-dump im playing Dance Dance Revolution 2 (sorry, Dancing Stage Universe 2) on the 360 on the pad, i only play freeplay on the mat. Im enjoying it, i like the way its presented and the voice over dude is welcome to narrate over my life as it happens for all to hear. As that comes to a close..

...Ridge Racer 6 returns. I just love it and every now and again i get this need to play it. Im tring to win every race without using Nitrous but its a long journey. Ive already ploughed 72 hours into the game as a whole according to the stats screen but im determined to squeeze a few more GS out of it.

Tales of Vesperia got a nice play last Sunday, what a gorgeous looking game, stunning in fact. Lots of talking tho.

Just back to Batman, i really cant reccommend it enough. Those who havent need to. Raptr says i wanked 45 hours into it in 6 days or so.

[HandsomeDead]

Been playing Sonic 3 & Knuckles a little, I'm stuck on that boss, the one thats a robot eye and it has spinny balls. I never had trouble on it as a kid but I just keep dying now, stupid fucking game.

Most of my gaming time has been on the Metroid Prime Trilogy, I must be half-way through the first game and despite the fact I have been the other Metroid games quite recently but I'm still finding new little things. On the most part the new controls are fantastic, the only issue I have is the way you have to switch visors/beams by holdig the plus/minus buttons and pointing at the tiles that pop up. It's fine doing it in normal situations but mid combat it gets a little fiddley. Its still fucking awesome though.

EDIT: I did also finish GTA4:TLaD, I liked the ending, it perfectly fits this new GTA ethos.

[Cyberpunk]

This week, I spent most of the mornings, and about £200 upgrading my computer. (All the comsole gamers feel free to point and snigger, but it's what I do.) I got a new motherboard, graphics card, and ram. I also bought two great games to do it justice. First of, dana nana nana nana BATMAN!!! Yes I have the pc version of Batman - Arkham Asylum, and I'm LOVING IT! A previous post will tell you that I bought it from Direct2Drive, but was waiting to activate it. This is such a cool game, with loads of depth and charactor. I'm running it a 1080p resolution, and it looks beautiful. What's not to love about the game. The voice acting is great, the graphics are superb, the gameplay rocks. Ok, so every bad guy looks like Mister Universe, but who cares. And bats don't fly out of dead people, but they have to have some sort of collectable/upgrade feature. This game has the most important thing I look for in a game. FUN! If the game is fun to play. I can forgive a lot. Too many games of late have relied on eye candy. My only qualm is you don't get to drive the Batmobile. At least I don;t think so, but I'm only a third through it so far.

My second new game is Need For Speed - Shift. I've only just started it, having got it today (19/09) but I think EA and Blackbox have redeemed themselves for the farse that was Undercover. Once I got racing, the first thing I thought was "Hang on, this looks like Forza!" And that's not a bad thing. It even has the green arrows that turn red on the corners if you go too fast. It's framerate is spot on; I got 52fps on 1080p. Undercover struggled to work at all, and when it did, you spent most of the race wait for it to buffer. Shift looks fantastic, with the most noticable effect being the depth of vision shifts within cockpit view. Your steering wheel and instruments blur as you race, and focus on the track in front. EA have done a great job in this respect, layering on the little details to increase the sense of immersion. Put your foot down and the depth of field changes, keeping the track in sharp focus while gently blurring out the cockpit. Sudden accelerations are also coupled with camera shake and the screen pulling out to mimic your head being pushed back into the seat, while emergency braking contracts your view suddenly as you lurch forward again. However, if you crash, you get thrown around the cockpit, and your vision will blur completely for a few seconds, mimicing a minor head knock, and even turning monochrome after a bad crash. A few bad points are the brakes seem a little harsh, automatic gearbox is too slow, but manual works fine. And overall (and this may be just me)it doesn't feel quite as polished as Forza does.

[retroed]

My second new game is Need For Speed - Shift. I've only just started it, having got it today (19/09) but I think EA and Blackbox have redeemed themselves for the farse that was Undercover.

That's because Shift is developed by Slightly Mad Studios, not Black Box.

Glad to hear you're enjoying Batman! I'll put some impressions up on Shift after I've had a bit more of a play.

Despite saying I'd be playing some more Layton during my week off, I haven't touched my DSi. All I've played this week is a couple hours of Need For Speed: Shift which I got today on the way back from Dorset.

[Cyberpunk]

Didn't Slightly Mad Studios have a lot to do with GTR and Simbin? I'm sure they started out as a racing mod company.

[retroed]

Slightly Mad Studios is an entertainment software development company headquartered in London, England. We employ all 85 of the former Blimey! Games LTD staff. We are a passionate team united with the single vision of creating the most detailed and authentic products, providing the most immersive and enjoyable gameplay experiences possible.

Slightly Mad Studios’ staff formed the core development team on the critically acclaimed and multiple award-winning GTR - FIA GT Racing Game, it’s successor GTR2, and the classic sports car racing game, GT Legends. A selected list being:

http://www.slightlymadstudios.com/about/

[stoobie]

Tales of Vesperia again for me - the end is in sight I think. Mopping up some sidequests which I am really enjoying and picking up weird things for the characters to wear. Hendo will like the fact that you can humiliate Karol by dressing him as a girl. If I can get Tales of Symphonia working on my Wii then I am going to play through that nextt.

Ive forsaken Batman (dont know why) and I am playing through Wolverine Origins instead. It's a really dumb game - you can just spam the attack button over and over with no real strategy, but it is good fun. Lots of blood and collectables and power ups as you would expect. I think its hilarious tho, that his vest appears and disappears from scene to scene. You can be walking through the jungle in a cut scene and he will be wearing his vest and then when the action starts he has taken it off! I cant believe it got through playtesting. I dont mind tho cos topless Hugh Jackman is a very nice sight There are lots of invisible walls and wooden doors that you cant crash through next to doors that you can - rubbish but fun.

I have also started Dragon Quest 4 - Chapters of the Chosen on the DS - on the second chapter. Not sure about it yet - I think I may have a bought a dodgy import copy (thanks Game pre-owned) as the second chapters dialogue is really bad! I know they try to write in dialects - the scottish first chapter is great - but I have no idea what the second chapters language is meant to be!

[CelShadedDreams]

Well if you want a PAL copy of symphonia then I have one going at the beginning of October. That new Symphonia spin off is coming soon, but it's rubbish, not like the original so it's not worth it.

I'm still on a rollercoaster binge, more RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 and some Thrillville: Off the rails. I was suprised by how good it was, loads of mini games built into it that are really fun and the placing and building of rides is done really well.

[Hendo]

I finished inFAMOUS this week, then went round finding some collectibles I missed, though I'm still missing 2 and I think they're in places I can't get back to.

Really recommend the game, was amazing fun. It has raised the bar for Crackdown 2, certainly. I went and started a new game and noticed how they quickly explain some gameplay things in the dialogue, like that you can't fire guns because you're too powerful to hold them and they disintegrate in your hands, same why you can't drive a car.

Also played a lot of the Uncharted 2 multiplayer beta and a fine time was had. Did a bit with Badger, but mostly played with randoms. It is fantastic fun but connecting to big games takes fucking ages, if you're after a co-op game of 2-3 players then it's fine, but proper deathmatch games take an age and a day to connect.

I think the other main game I've been on has been Red Faction : Guerrilla and it's been great to get back into it. I'd like to get this and Lost and the Damned finished before Gay Tony arrives.

[Craymen Edge]

but I have no idea what the second chapters language is meant to be!

Racist.

I believe they're meant to be speaking Russian, but badly/literally translated into English. It's probably taking the joke a bit too far.

[badjuju]

nothing new is really grabbing me at the mo. so been delving into classic nes and snes download territory, castlevania 3, diddy's kong-quest and mario the lost levels have been getting some play. definately looking forward to scribblenauts, but yoshis island ds is getting a lot of play at the mo. i actually rate it better than new super mario bros.

[Craymen Edge]

I've mostly been playing Pure on the 360 this week. After going back and getting first place finishes on the couple of tracks I couldn't manage when I completed it last year, I then went and deleted my saved game and started it all over again. It's a great game, with some really enjoyable racing. It has me looking forward to Split Second next year.

I've also spent a few hours playing AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity (PC), which is a sci-fi styled base jumping game. It's got a great sense of humour, and a silly but enjoyable presentation style.

I'm enjoying it a lot, it's not something you'd spend hours and hours playing, but I could see it becoming one of my go-to games whenever I've a spare 20 minutes.

The Brutal Legend pre-order demo got a couple of plays this week. Thankfully it's great, and the pre-order stays, I can't wait for it to plop through the letterbox. It becomes available to all in a week or two, it's worth a download just to check out the menu. It's awesome.

[Manicm]

Gaming week, ive decided to focus on one game only! ok maybe 2 games!

Batman, its just superb, i can't get enough of it with what little spare time i have.

Professor Layton the new one on my DS for the train journey.

I also have Halo:ODST and NFS:shift all wrapped up still awaiting some gaming time.

[Bob]

Since Tuesday my gaming time has been taken up with ODST of course. Mixed feelings on the campaign but Firefight mode is pure awesomeness. At least the closed maps are, when things get too open or hard to navigate then it all kind of falls apart and your points creep up slowly until you fail and die. Not cool.

Before that it was Blue Dragon which is really far too easy and has a completely generic story. Played it for seven hours so far and I am kind of asking myself why? I like Akira Toriyama's art style but I liked it Dragonball Z and DragonQuest as well and it's exactly the same here so that isn't exactly a reason to push on. The combat system is basically a case of pressing A without even thinking and the story and characters are your standard JRPG nonsense. I suppose you could say it has a lot of charm because things look cute or pretty but I've seen it all before and last time it had a dude that could destroy planets with his fingernails.

Surprise of the week would be Pinball FX mainly because I had no idea I was going to buy it but also because it is very good. It's just Pinball so there isn't a lot that can be said about it. Tables are nice, there are online leaderboards and until Sunday it's only a few quid so give it a go.

On Wednesday I experienced one of the busiest and worst XBLA release days as well with the Warriors, whatever that spaceship game is called (Ion Storm or some shizz?) and Zombah Apocalypse. Two of them were so bad I only played them for about 30 seconds and the other one was probably just as terrible but had Zombahs in it and I do love shooting/chopping up Zombahs.

[HandsomeDead]

Not alot this week, Halo 3: ODST has been played but only in single player, I like it anyway. Metroid Prime Trilogy is still being worked on too. I must be about half an hour from the end. I'll probably get that done then play ODST full time untill its done then work my way through MP2: Echoes. So thats next week covered too.

[stoobie]

Finished Tales of Vesperia - enjoyed it so much. I rushed the end as I was getting bored of sidequests on it - talk to person - go to other town - talk to another person - get new title - ad infinitum. Still I sank round about 60 hours into it and not one of them was wasted

Other than that ive not really spent any time on anything at all. On Dragon Quest 4 I am still on the Russian second chapter, but i've not been able to play on the train lately due to overcrowding.

I've played a little bit more of Wolverine, downloaded but not yet played the Uncharted 2 demo, had a few goes on Project Gotham 4 and tried to work out what the fuck is going on in Katamari Forever (terrible camera and clunky controls)

My aim for this week is to get through Batman Arkham Asylum and Wolverine Origins to get them out of the way before the Christmas rush starts!

[Cyberpunk]

Not much this week. I'm still playing through Need For Speed - Shift, and Batman Arkham Asylum, though I've not had too much time to play. I've also started a new game called Section 8, which I borrowed. It's not too bad, although there's nothing new in it. It's an online-focused futuristic FPS, where you play a space marine type charactor, equipped with some heavy duty battle armour complete with jump jets and shields. Section 8 plays well, with plenty of eye candy, and despite its cliched setting (Warhammer 40K without the licences), the intergalactic fights are unpredictable and chaotic, and the very large collection of objectives gives a more thoughtful player the chance to help their team in ways other than wanton destruction. There are a few bad points in Section 8, such as vehicles that are all but useless and environments that are way too large (because you run everywhere, because of the poor vehicles), but the main elements are enjoyable, though not quite gripping. It has a heavy reliance on gameplay techniques found in other first-person shooters, so Section 8 struggles to stand out, but the engaging matches and satisfying gun battles make this game worth a look. Maybe a rental, or when the price drops.