Critical Acclaim +: Open Mic

[Sly Reflex]

I like Sonic 2, it's my favourite Sonic game. It fixed all the faults I had with the original game and added enough without being overwhelming or deviating too much from the formula. I don't think it's as good as some people like to point out. It's all style over substance really.

[Sly Reflex]

Mark of the Ninja is next up. I've not played enough of it to really have an informed opinion.

[Hendo]

I love Mark of the Ninja but need to go back and finish it up. Stealth done right.

Agree completely with illdizzle on Sonic 2, it just wasn't as immediate as the first and the magic wasn't there for me.

[Sly Reflex]

I'm surprised at MotN only getting one reply, it made quite a big splash when it was released.

Next up is Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

[regemond]

Love PoP:SoT. Loved it when it came out and I got it on Gamecube, so much so that I went out and bought the GBA version and loved that. Loved it when I got it again in the PoP HD Trilogy. To me, this is the PERFECT Sunday afternoon game. It's not too challenging, when you get the hang of the platforming it handles like a dream, and it's just a nice, chilled one.

I've lost count of the amount of times I've played this game from start to finish. The Mrs tried it out and likes it a lot too, but she's just shocked at the speed I fly through. Just talking about it makes me want to play it now. Even the little touches, like the Prince's clothes getting ruined as he goes through the game, the relationship between the Prince and Farah. The Prince talking to himself as a means to expand the story. Not even narrating it and talking to the player, actually talking to himself about how much Farah infuriates him at one point, it all just adds up.

The combat left a lot to be desired, and was ridiculously infuriating at some points, but you know what? It makes no difference, this is still always going to be one of my favourite games. It's not about the combat, it's about the almost puzzle like way of figuring out the best way to get out of the room you're in.

All this without talking about the dagger powers. Probably the best contextual use I've seen of rewinding time, the whole game is based around it FFS. Not like racing games where they throw in a rewind button to make it easier, but actually part of the story.

The game has an identity. I don't know if that's the right word, but hopefully some of you will get what I mean.

[Sly Reflex]

I think the thing I like most about this is the story. For the time the story was head and shoulders above nearly everything else, it was mature without being dark or seedy. A genuine love story. It was also really good at the whole equality thing, Farah was just as capable of kicking someones head in as you. Sure she might have been wearing next to fuck all but she was well written. She wasn't just there for titillation like many women are in games.

As a whole I just really like the way the game is presented. The way you are told as it happened in a past tense instead of a current one, where failing would cause the Prince to stutter over his words and go back on what he'd said. It felt really smart. I liked the colour coded enemies as well, which ones you could vault and which ones you could wall jump. It made combat flow really well once you learnt it, although there are points where you are really put up against it needlessly. Trying to stab enemies when they are on the floor and surrounded is hard as fuck. The contextual fighting paved the way for the Batman games, something which I won't let go unnoticed.

Yeah, it's a good game. Not the best, but it's really good.

[Sly Reflex]

Braid.

[Hendo]

I loved Sands of Time, really thought it was a brilliant game.

It was one of the first games I noticed that gave a good story reason of why you could die over and over again rather than just because it was a video game.

"That's not how it happened!"

Braid I also loved. It took me a while to see what the fuss was about but I think that was because I couldn't get my head round it looking like a platformer but really wasn't - it was very much a puzzle game that happened to look like a platformer.

And the end really blew my mind, one of those levels you really have to play for yourself.

[RoboticMonk3y]

Braid?

yea! loved it!

love puzzle games, so this was right up my street.

there's potential backchat over the game having an ambiguous meaning, and maybe being a little pretentious, but that didn't bother me, I just enjoyed the puzzles, even if some of them were frustrating! (the fickle companion was brutal!)

music was good, graphics were nice.

[Sly Reflex]

I thought it was alright. I'll be honest, some of it was completely over my head. I completed puzzles that I have no idea how I completed. Even though I totally understand the story of the game I think it's a little overrated. Maybe it just wasn't for me.

Littlebigplanet is up next.

[DANGERMAN]

I quite liked LBP, any criticism of the floaty controls is fair but it was a breath of fresh air when it came out. The 2nd game is a better execution of what's good about the series

Braid is probably the best example of gameplay reflecting narrative I can think of. Obviously I'm not going to spoil it in case anyone hasn't played it, but if the character talks about doing something figuratively then you do it in the game. It's a shame Blow never explained it, I'd love to know which, if any theories were right

Sands of Time was awesome too , hugely important in terms of game structure for adventure games, it's just a shame more wasn't learned from the how good the characters were

[Sly Reflex]

I have a bit of a problem with LBP. For a start Sackboy controls like a trolley full of ginned up tramps with a wobbly wheel. That's not a good start.

The other part that bugs me is the creation stuff. I'm sure technically it's very impressive what people have come up with in game, but that doesn't excuse it of being totally devoid of fun. The way the game goes about letting you play in these areas is shite as well. You seem to spend ages flicking about pissing around in the box waiting for stuff to download. When you consider something like Halo 3 onwards will let you browse files, set them to download and then jump into them it seems a bit weird that they chose to do it the way they did.

Really this should have set my gaming world alight. It's a toolbox that allows me to create whatever I can imagine. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth though. The concept of building stuff is done way better elsewhere.

However, I adore how it looks and the whole presentation of the package. Aesthetically I think at the time it was one of the best looking games around.

I really should play LBP2, I've got it but I've not even broke the seal on it yet.

[spatular]

Yeah I need to get round to lbp2 too. I like lbp, but as mentioned its not without it's problems, great silly fun in multiplayer too. I think it's more the imagination that goes into the levels that I liked more than the gameplay. Like that level where you drag that thing round, that was pretty funny.

[Hendo]

I only played LBP in co-op which makes it awesome, I never had a problem with the controls.

[Sly Reflex]

Sam and Max: Hit the Road.

[radiofloyd]

The best adventure game I've played, and one of the best games full stop. Definite 10/10.

Where adventure games usually go wrong is the pacing and the obscurity of the puzzles, Sam and Max nails these down perfectly. Of course the whole game is build around humour and the script and voice acting are brilliant. And adventure games live or die by the quality of each individual scene - well from the Tunnel of Love to Gator Golf to The World's Largest Ball of Twine. Sam and Max is just inspired from beginning to end.

Also have to mention the game's fantastic intro, which pretty much set's a crazy high standard from which the game never falls.

[Sly Reflex]

World of Warcraft.

[Sly Reflex]

Despite it getting the the chart on a semi regular basis WoW fails to clock up one post. You failed me WoW players.

Next up, WWF No Mercy.

[TromaDogg]

I'll throw this in as the opening statement. WWF No Mercy is not only one of the best wrestling games ever made, but one of the best fighting games ever made full stop. Oh, and apologies in advance for the fairly long story but it goes towards explaining why I think this.

Yeah, that's pretty bold. But I actually credit THQ/AKI's wrestling games with getting me back into watching wrestling back in the mid 1990's....I used to watch wrestling on World Of Sport all the time when I was a kid and loved Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks and all the other guys who used to make appearences. Then I got into WCW and WWF in the early 1990's, but I was a bit older by then, so once it went really stupid and childish (like when they were pushing the likes of Doink The Clown as a main guy) I pretty much gave up with it. It was only a couple of years later when I had an N64 and the fact that there was a distinct lack of fighting games on it that made me decide to take a punt on a new wrestling game at the time (WCW/NWO World Tour), and to be honest, I was pretty much blown away.

The presentation wasn't up to much, but cast of characters was good (some wrestlers I remembered, some I didn't know at the time) and best of all it played brilliantly and completely unlike any of the other crappy wrestling games I'd played before.....it was fairly simple to learn but had a real skill to it, a clever weak/strong grapple and strike system based on how long buttons were held down for, reversals which could be easily pulled off at the right time if you knew what to look out for in the animations and a momentum shift bar that could help you to win a match with a combo of decent moves and a big finisher if used correctly. Being able to have 4 wrestlers in the ring at once too (not just tag matches, but 3 vs 1 handicap matches) was also the icing on the cake, and me and my mate put countless hours into learning all the characters and their moves. It was just fun to play, and immediately became our multiplayer game of choice.

It also got me back into actually watching wrestling again, at a time when wrestling was actually really good. I started following all the WCW Nitro shows and got back into watching WWF Raw and the PPVs each week, even bought my own Sky digibox for my bedroom pretty much specifically to watch wrestling. Gone was all the kiddy crap from a couple of years back, and instead there was the NWO fronted by The Outsiders and a now evil Hulk Hogan attempting a hostile takeover of WCW, Sting had pretty much become a wrestling version of The Crow, and a new guy called Goldberg was pretty much destroying everybody....whilst over on WWF, a couple of guys called Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock were becoming really popular, gang warfare was rife with a militant black power group called Nation Of Domination throwing their weight around, and The Undertaker had formed a satanic cult and was attempting to brainwash people. Being a big fan of B-movies and trash TV anyway, it didn't take me long to get sucked back into it at all.

So by the time WCW/NWO Revenge appeared on the N64, I'd actually preordered it and was all over it on release day. This time around, they'd greatly improved the presentation, improved the graphics and added a 'royal rumble' style mode, but it still wasn't quite 'there'....but I loved it all the same and it became my new favourite wrestling game (I did try Acclaim's WWF Warzone as well, but it was crap)...however, as far as the TV shows were going, WWF was starting to become a much more entertaining show than WCW (following the infamous Montreal Screwjob) and I was really starting to wish that THQ/AKI would do a WWF game instead. My prayers were pretty much answered the following year.

THQ got the WWF license and put out Wrestlemania 2000 which was fantastic. It was the first wrestling game I'd seen that did wrestler entrances properly, complete with full entrance themes, cage matches had been added and also a superb 'Create A Wrestler' mode, with so many moves available in it that it was really easy to create and add any character you wanted to the already sizeable character line up.

And then the following year THQ/AKI released WWF No Mercy, which not only added ladder and First Blood matches, but also a proper 'story' mode, with multiple branching storyline paths for each championship belt depending on how you ended certain matches and backstage arenas where you could have brawls in the arena corridors, locker rooms and parking lots using the environments themselves as weapons. And that was on top of an even more improved Create A Wrestler mode, and slight tweaks and refinements to the same basic game engine which already worked fantastically well to begin with. It was, beyond doubt, the best wrestling game with the best roster of characters released at the best time (right at the height of WWF's 'Attitude Era'), and even though 'WWF Smackdown' had appeared on the Playstation and was making waves, I still think No Mercy was by far the better game with it's much more skillful and slightly slower paced and more methodical gameplay. Even friends who weren't such big wrestling fans got interested....in what other fighting games at the time could 3 of us play at the same time, bash the hell out of each other with chairs and ladders and other weapons and form fragile alliances (2 of us would often gang up on the other player, then quickly turn on each other)? There's also 'Special Referee' mode that allows one player to take controle of the ref, who can attack either of the people in the match and deliberately cheat by performing fast counts (or slow counts) if he wants. The roster of wrestlers is brilliantly balanced and diverse, with heavyweight brawlers like Stone Cold, The Rock, Triple H and The Undertaker alongside good all rounders like Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Shawn Micheals and Kurt Angle, as well as speedy lightweights like Jeff Hardy, X-Pac and Christian, on top of a whole load of unlockable characters including the commentators. And just like the wrestling TV shows, you'd also get an instant reply of some highlights and the finish of the match as well, just to rub it in to the losers.

Unfortunately, that was the last 'proper' wrestling game AKI worked on, unless you count Def Jam Vendetta (which I honestly didn't bother with), and the inferior Smackdown series became WWF's flagship game instead...even though they've vastly improved the presentation of the Smackdown games over the years and added all manner of game modes, they still don't feel anywhere near as technical as No Mercy did, and some matches can be over way too quickly. Not only that, but wrestling itself has become a victim of it's own success and more people watching meant more scrutiny, and the ridiculously violent, balls to the wall trash TV show I loved watching 12 years ago has now changed into a regulated, sanitsed, cleaned up and much more politically correct shadow of it's former self with only some very rare occurence nowadays that remind you of how great it was for that brief period in the late 1990's and early 2000's when WCW and WWF were in a bitter ratings war and would do just about anything to keep viewers interested. Yuke's WWE games (particularly over the last 3 or 4 years) have become 'same old shit', and just like the TV shows are afraid to take chances and attempt any innovation anymore.

That being said, there is some light at the end of the tunnel....I did really enjoy WWE 13's 'Attitude Era' mode which whilst still not quite as good as No Mercy, felt like a real homage to it. If Yukes can do something similar again and maybe implement a 'WCW Nitro' or 'ECW' mode into a future WWE game (as WWE now own both of those brands), wrestling games might actually start to feel special and worthwhile again. We'll see.

[Sly Reflex]

I knew the game was well received, but I wasn't expecting that.