Critical Acclaim +: Open Mic

[Sly Reflex]

Dead Space 2.

[Sly Reflex]

Gunstar Heroes.

[HandsomeDead]

I really don't know where to start with how good Gunstar Heroes is, but I think it doesn't get enough acclaim. To this day its a game I compare most action games to.

It's a game so full of stuff which means it shouldn't work, it should be an absolute mess, but it isn't. You have so many ways to play this game. If Gunstar Heroes was just a scrolling shooter it would be a great one, if it was just a Shinobi-style brawler it would be a great one, but it takes these two styles of play and just melds them into hectic and glorious fun. And just the simple act of throwing an enemies own bombs back at him feels awesome. You get these situations where you return a bomb at someone while in mid-air and you kick someone in the face on the way down then turn and shoot down air-born enemies with your gun. There are five ways to react to any situation and they all feel good, and it still remains a difficult and engaging game. I don't know how Treasure did it. It's genius.

Even the simple character type changes the entire way you play the game. You can have a character who can move while he shoots and one that plants his feet down and doesn't move while shooting (I was a fixed shot guy as it was more accurate for shooting diagonally; plus, did a cool flying kick for his air melee and whore a rad headband). Like most modern shooters, you could only carry two weapons but the neat little thing they'd do here is you could combine them to give them different properties (I was a laser + machinegun guy. This subtle combination made a more powerful laser that instead of shooting in a strict 8 way direction would fire in a more, how do you describe? if you fired at 3 o'clock and moved to 12 you'd get a fan of lasers at 1 and 2 o'clock). All the weapons had these weird properties to them and they were fun to play with.

But enough of the technical stuff, though like most Treasure games it's in the technicalities that the fun lies even if you don't realise it.

The amount of bosses and sub-bosses you fight in this game are insane, and they're pretty much always fun. But Gunstar Heroes probably has the best boss of all: Seven Force!

That boss also takes place on the best, most inventive mine cart level ever made. On the video they are playing the game on expert and they have to fight all forms. I don't think I ever managed that, I think I only ever did it on hard where you fight 5 of the 7 forms (and I can't believe he has this person found a may to exploit Crab Force :-().

What else is there? it looks awesome with its cute/cool art style and mad boss designs. It has some of the best music on the Megadrive. I want a new one, or a game in the spirit of it. I want Platinum Games to slam Vanquish and Bayonetta together in a way that works and fill it with loads of cool robots and a giant acrobatic man mode of curry and rice and a sentient blob of shampoo with hot lips. Then, we may have something as good as Gunstar Heroes for today's gamers.

[Sly Reflex]

I think the thing that impresses me most about that game is how smooth it all is. Anyway, here's the next game.

Metroid Prime.

[Bob]

I remember loving Prime and then getting to a certain point where the backtracking and constant enemy respawns really wore me down. Then I stopped playing it. I didn't lose any sleep over not finishing it.

[spatular]

metroid prime is ace, looks and sounds amazing, but yeah too hard for me, i had to use a cheat disk to complete it, i couldn't even beat the stupid omega pirate, let alone the last boss.

[Sly Reflex]

For me, Metroid Prime was the first game to do the whole Metroid formula in 3D properly. I know we've seen it before in earlier games, but here they really showed the industry how it should be done. Everything is in plain sight. When you start the game and you're looking at the areas that you cannot reach you just assume that you're going to loop around on them, not that eventually you're just going to be able to double jump up there, or use a spider ball to take a short cut.

It's one of those worlds where they've obviously sat down after playing areas themselves and though "Wouldn't it be cool to put something that goes from here to there, but lock it down to a certain skill?" so you're constantly getting shown these issues that you cannot deal with yet. You get it in your head where you're seeing all these obstacles that you cannot tackle, but as soon as you get that kit you're trying to mentally tick off the checklist in your head of all the dead ends that used to provide you problems now provide you will solutions, even if it only happened to be a rat run between areas that allowed you to cut time off fighting enemies.

I think the biggest hurdle for many, including me, was how it controlled, it took me some extended play to get into the mantra of how it wanted me to play. The FPS games that were finding their feet with consoles at the time with a standardised control scheme hurt the game for many. Looking back at it though, I really don't think what has become the norm would have suited this game and the frenetic way you're dealing with areas and enemies. In those games you're tasked with looking, shooting and reloading. Here you're having to platform, avoid incoming, manage weapons and charged shots plus managing visor abilities. There's more micromanagement going on that would reliably fit into what we'd expect from a first person game. The way they implemented it meant less travel times for your thumbs and fingers. It's not perfect by any means, but it works a lot better than people are willing to admit.

The difficulty was all sorts of brutal. I really struggled through a lot of the bosses. That plant boss at the start had me totally backed against a wall, I just couldn't do it quick enough. The Omega Pirate took me so many goes to kill the first time I ever beat him. I was stuck on him for about 2 weeks, the guy just wouldn't lay down and die, I think that particular fight is one of the hardest things anyone is likely to face in gaming. If I remember rightly it took me less time to kill Alma in Ninja Gaiden, and she was a total bitch. Luckily from then on Prime lets up a little bit. It's still difficult but there's none of that being mobbed by shitty mobs while you're trying to off a big bugger.

The score to this game is amazingly well done. I mean, it's typically sci-fi but they really hit the nail on the head for what they needed to do. Industrial beats offset to what sounds like static interference set the tone on the start screen, letting you know that you're going to be in this on your own on your journey of solace. The piano keys that melodically dance up and down in Phendrana Drifts reflect the cold and barren land and capture perfectly in essence what it's like to be alone, cold and have no idea what is coming around the next corner. The Chozo Ruins music is like a futuristic archaeology dig where anything and everything will kill you if you don't take care, the shakes and rattles signifying that somethings not far away and it's watching you trespass on its turf. Then you have the odd music in the crashed Space Pirate craft, suitably orchestrated for searching a sunken wreck. Seriously, the music to this game blows pretty much every other piece of media out of the water. There's very few games, films or television that manages to get it as perfect as Prime does.

Metroid Prime is one of the few games I've fully completed more than once. Not only is it the best game on the NGC, it's one of the finest games crafted. Ever. If any developer decides to make a metroidvania style game, every single member of the team who is involved should play this game and see how it is done.

For me, Prime is severely underappreciated. It really should be more respected by gamers, even though that never managed to finish it.

[Pikman]

This game is certainly in my top 3, probably even my list of top '1'

Loved it from beginning to end. Utterly magical.

[HandsomeDead]

Pretty much what Sly said.

Looking back to when it was released pretty much everyone I knew didn't bother with it because it kinda looked like Halo but it wasn't so it was shit. It has lock-on so it's easy. So many inaccurate surface level observations were made of Metroid Prime at the time, or at least it seemed to me. The mechanics of the game are actually really interesting.

It seems to get its dues more know, though, but it's a shame we have so many games that took inspiration from Halo and after ten years we still haven't had a Metroid Prime rip-off. I'd love someone to rip it off, weirdly.

But I want to through out how brilliantly the world was fleshed out. The scanning was a great way to suck you into this world without any need for cinematics, but everything has a reason and/or a history which can be read about and understood, and I'd say it's done in the best way: Elder Scrolls' lore and books are a long winded and Bioshock's audio tapes also suffer from that at times, as well as being easier to ignore since they sit in the background as audio. Metroid Prime's info is short and informative and reads like a dry recording which lets you just absorb the information and use it to fill your imagination, instead of a writer's hand performing a load of flowery stuff for you; not that there is anything wrong with that, I just think Metroid Prime's approach is very effective for fleshing out a long unpopulated world.

And all the other stuff: it's cool to put your eyes on, to put your ears to and to put in your hands and have a grand time side-dashing and super missile-ing Space Pirates.

[radiofloyd]

I've played Metroid Prime as part of MP Trilogy on the Wii and I have to say the Wii controls are brilliant on that game, hard to imagine playing it with a controller.

It's definitely one of the best games of all time. It's a lonely game, basically you versus this vast world Retro have created. I suppose what's most impressive is the structure of the world, how rooms are linked, the importance of height/verticality in the game - how often are you travelling upwards and downwards in Metroid Prime? Every new power up you collect has you mentally checking "where have I seen this symbol before?". You are constantly traveling back and forth across the levels, discovering details and routes you missed the first time around. New discoveries could lead to something minor (extra health, missiles) or major (a teleport to a whole new area of another level).

It all adds up - the music, the atmosphere, the difficulty, the variety - to an incredible game.

[DANGERMAN]

I'm one of those who never finished Metroid Prime, it was less because of difficulty and more timing. It came out not long before some exams, I think I'd already put Windwaker on the backburner for it, but I put a chunk of time in then didn't play it for a month. Trying to jump back in with that map wasn't much fun and even the thought of starting the Wii one from scratch (if I could ever find it cheap) isn't that appealing. Shame though because I think it is one of the great games

As is Gunstar Heroes, it's probably the best game Treasure have ever made, which is saying something. It sums up the Megadrive for me as much as something like Secret of Mana sums up the snes

[Sly Reflex]

Scanning in Prime is probably the precursor to the audio diaries in Bioshock. There's a real sense in Prime that you've just busted into an old disused factory and can piece together what went wrong by salvaging notes jotted down by the people that once worked there. It's data mining at its best.

[illdog]

After pressing start at the MP main screen, the menu music that follows is one of my favorite little tunes of all time.

[dante76]

I have both 1 and 2, but haven't touched them ever. I'm running out of good 360 games so might go to the cube.

[Sly Reflex]

Resident Evil 4.

[HandsomeDead]

It's a coincidence that the last three games have been three of my all time favourites. They are games that deserve all the acclaims in my unhumble opinion.

I bought Resident Evil 4 again last night since its half price on the rickety old PSN (I also bought Alundra which I'v never played so I hope that's good. Is that on The List?).

I've said a lot of things about Resident Evil 4 spread across all the places I say things about games on the internet so I'm not gonna go on and on.

The structure of the game, and the pace, is just this big, awesome horror adventure. I've called it an awesome action game before but it's more than that. It's a big Lord of the Rings style epic with high intensity and low intensity bits, but instead of boring things like elves and orcs and middle England it's creepy monks, a midget and all manner of parasitic beasts in some place in Spain far away from the British tourists and white plastic furniture.

The gameplay is great and satisfying. I love how you have to find a place to shoot and bunker down until it gets to crowded and you have to find an opportunity to escape and finding a new place to shoot from. It's strategic and requires you to manage the horde and know the environment around you (and a lot of the areas are really well designed and make them fun to get around). The way the horde closes in on you gives you a real false sense of security as they come in slowly but a cheeky one will flank you and impale you with a pitch fork. It makes you keep your wits about you and I think its pretty much always an unnerving game in its weirdness.

If you want to know more just hit the RE4 thread or where ever else I've mentioned it.

It's just the best ride in video games, I think. Gunstar Heroes is the best toy, Metroid Prime is the best world and Resident Evil 4 is the best ride. Three of the best.

[Hendo]

I love it, the best in the series.

The only real criticism I would level at it is that it goes on a bit too long and outstays its welcome. I probably spent more time with the derided Resi 5 and completed that multiple times through due to the shorter play time and really enjoyed that.

But Resi 4 started the whole third-person action thing didn't it? Not the first game like that, but the first important and quality one. It's a shame that they pushed the series forwards but have struggled since.

Also, in all seriousness, the first thing that enters my head when someone brings up Resident Evil 4 is the annoying shriek of "Leon! Hay-ulp!".

[DANGERMAN]

I remember importing the issue of Famitsu that had the demo disc from Play-Asia, I wasn't all that arsed about the franchise so I think it was just to pad out my order to get free shipping. I had some mates round and put it on, spent the next hour like If we had a bigger version of that emoticon that would have been our faces when we got killed by chainsaw guy

It's a great game, the Wii version especially. It does have some problems, like Hendo says it's maybe a bit long, at the very least the way it reuses ideas makes it feel long

[Bob]

I absolutely love Resident Evil 4 but I have never been convinced by it's innovation or influence. For me it innovated for Resident Evil and did some cool things with an action adventure. That doesn't take away from just how smashing the game is, I have always just been slightly confused by its supposed influence.

[HandsomeDead]

I absolutely love Resident Evil 4 but I have never been convinced by it's innovation or influence. For me it innovated for Resident Evil and did some cool things with an action adventure. That doesn't take away from just how smashing the game is, I have always just been slightly confused by its supposed influence.

I think the influence comes from quite surface level stuff like the over the shoulder view. I'm fairly sure it was one of the earlier games to have that. Just stuff like that that's taken for granted now.