Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf...

These guys made a music game instead of a music video. It's... I don't know what it is. But you should play it.

Still playing Zelda Ocarina. I'm now stuck on the race at the ranch to get Epona. I keep losing and become 50 rupees out of pocket.

lol damn ranch hands.

That was very interesting. Stupid fun.

I couldn't resist the £4.99 GTA pack so I downloaded it. I've started playing GTA III so far. For the first time in any GTA game, instead of using cheats to piss about over the city, I'm actually doing missions.

I completed Trauma 100% in an hour and a half. It was an enjoyable and interesting hour and a half, but I could say the same for any number of free things, and this game was £4.39.

It was nice, but it just wasn't worth it.

I've been playing a shit ton of Batman: Arkham City and goddamn, it's one of my favourite games of all time already. I just did a whacky side mission that involved Mad Hatter.

Also, the Mr. Freeze boss fight was amazing, I loved the fact you could choose the way to approach him.

Game of the year of all years, motherfucker.

*Phew*

Okay, just finished Bastion.

Before I get all worked up, I'll just say that this is definitely not a PC-specific game. I enjoyed it with my own control methods, of course, but it felt immediately quite 'Xbox-y', so I'm sure that tiny group of people who own Xboxes will be able to enjoy it to its full potential.

Okay, the game. When I set out, the first thing I thought was 'Zelda'. Then 'Braid'. Then 'Diablo'. Eventually I realised that it was pulling so many different tricks that it was becoming hard to find comparisons that did it justice. Does that mean it is an amazingly original game? Not necessarily. It just makes it a rather good one.

It's a throwback in some ways, to a time when execution was king, and a sense of style was a pillar of good design. Frankly, it's got it all.

Characterful weapons? Check.
Upgrade system? Check.
Special moves? Check.
Experience perks? Check.
Big Moral Choices™? Check.
Intriugingly twisty story? Check.
Bits of background you have to find yourself? Check.
Emotional Moments™? Check.
Kickass soundtrack? Check.
Funky architechture? Check.
Oil paint graphics? Check.
Story-central hub area? Check.
Comedy? Check.
A play style to suit everybody? Check.
On-the-fly flexible difficulty? Check.
Skill challenges? Check.
Replay value? Check.
Post-apocalyptic fantasy world? Check.
Magic alcohol? Oh, check.

Character roster: Gravelly-voiced Father Figure, That Shifty Guy Who Probably Betrays You, Ambiguous Love Interest?
Check, Check and possibly Check.

Player-grabbing gimmick? Check. :p Your story is being told as you're living it (Cue big revelation at the end). Even stuff as simple as changing your weapon loadout gets a characterful comment.

Those funny little moments in a game that rattle around inside your skull for ages and you're not sure why? Big check.

You get the idea. It's a game that's pretty much exactly the sum of its parts, plus extra points for presentation. It's got a lot of parts. It's a good game. Also longer than I was expecting.

In a sentence that rings true in both game and story: There's more to it than meets the eye.

Trailer. It's currently on Xbox for 1200 MSP, Steam for £11.49 (it won't show me any other currency, sorry), with fairly representative demos of the first chapter available for both.

Please have a go. I'm full of spoilers and I want to talk about it with someone. Seriously, the final choice is a real kicker.

Oh, and I completed Blinding of Issac too. I literally bombed that Mother.

So, I beat Batman: Arkham City just a while ago. Man, this is pretty much my favourite game of all time.

Warning! This text contains a lot of SPOILERS including THE ENDING!

The game started off alright, but once you really ventured into Arkham City and had the city in your hands, it was awesome. Took a while to get used to the controls of gliding and such, but still, awesome.

Combat

The combat is really great, it really feels rewarding when you get a huge combo and do a takedown. I also like the new gadgets except the fact that you don't really even need the line launcher even though you get it later on in the game.

The challenge mode

The Riddler's Revenge mode (Challenge mode) is pretty fun. I got a 46x combo earlier, trying to get over 50 for the achievement. Plus now you have Combat challenges, Predator challenges and Riddler Campaigns. The campaigns seem to be levels where you have to do certain things in order to get the three medals.

The Story

Ah yes, the part of the game that really shines.

You start off as Bruce Wayne (In case you didn't know, Bruce Wayne is Batman!) and you're doing a conference of some sort and there are a bunch of reporters there and all of the sudden, Hugo Strange's men attack you and kidnap you.

Later on you get escorted to Arkham City and Penguin's men are already waiting for you to revenge. You have to defeat Penguin's men and then you get the Batman suit and start off with the free-roaming. Well, you can do main missions if you want to, but I straight off went to find some side missions and collectibles.

If you like collecting things and doing puzzles you are in luck because there are over 400 Riddler trophies/challenges/riddles in the game and getting all of them will take a long time.

I won't go through everything that happens in the story, but basically, the plot is that Hugo Strange is the new mayor in Arkham City and his plan is to start 'Protocol 10' which basically means complete havoc in the city.

But that's not the biggest concern in the game because Joker poisons Batman with his diseased blood that came from the Venom he used and if he doesn't find a cure, he will die. Then you will have to work together with Victor Fries a.k.a Mr. Freeze and find a cure for the disease in order to find out Hugo Strange's plans and to stop Joker from doing whatever he's planning to do.

But it won't be so easy when you've got Two-Face's gang, Penguin's gang, Joker's gang and the regular convicts after you. You also have to fight various villains such as; The Penguin, Ra's Al Ghul, Solomon Grundy and Mr. Freeze. (Later on in the game.)

Mr. Freeze is willing to help you gain the care when you rescue him from the Penguin's Ice Lounge, but in order to do so, he will need an enzyme that lasts long enough for the cure to work, and in order to do that, Batman will have to find Ra's Al Ghul.

Batman has to go through the 'Demon Trials' to get to see Ra's Al Ghul, but after he does so, Ra's decides to be a pain in the ass and wants Batman to take over his place and lead his league of assassins, but Batman doesn't do so.

Then you have the missing ingredient to the cure, but when you return to Freeze, he has become aggressive because Joker kidnapped his wife, Nora, and they don't get along with Batman anymore and you have an epic bossfight.

After that, Freeze is willing to help Batman again, but since they fought all the time, during that time Harley Quinn stole the cure and took it to Joker. Then Batman has to go fight Joker to get the cure, but Hugo Strange releases Protocol 10 and you have to defeat him first before the whole city turns dead.

You don't really fight Hugo Strange, but it's a pain in the ass to get to the 'Wonder Tower' he is in and it turns out that Ra's Al Ghul was controlling Strange all along and making him do what he says with the promise of giving him Lazarus a.k.a the liquid that makes Ra's young forever.

Then Strange gets killed by Ra's and the tower explodes so Batman and Ra's jump out of the building, but Ra's gets killed during the fall.

Then you have to go fight Joker, but turns out Joker has been pulling a trick on you for the whole time and he never had the cure, Talia Al Ghul, Ra's' daughter, stole it from Harley.

Now... The Grand finale:

Talia Al Ghul gets killed by Joker when Batman realizes the Joker he saw earlier was a fake, and the real Joker then shoots Talia. The 'fake Joker' was actually non other than Clayface who had been mimicking Joker all along and you get an epic boss fight finale with him and at the end.

The ending is really hard to explain so I'll just give you the video for it.

The end is really well done and I really felt emotional when Joker dies and during the credits, you have a missed call from Joker, from 3 hours ago and he starts singing a lullaby to you.

I know, I'm just rambling and this really wasn't a review, sorry, but I'd still give this game a 10/10.


~You know what's pretty funny? Even after all this, I would have still saved you.~

So here’s my little mini review of the recently released XBLA port of Daytona USA.

So Daytona USA is a game I have loved for years and years so I was very excited when the XBLA port was announced and they did a fine damn job of porting this game as well.

So instead of just taking the arcade game and having it run on an emulator some changes have been made, for starters the game has received updated graphics, but nothing to extensive, just cleaning up of the textures which do look very nice, it’s still not “with” todays standards but the game still looks very nice and by default the game screen fills up the width and height of your TV/Monitor.

The biggest problem with the game is the controls! Goodness me I have never encountered controls this bad on a racing game before, you have to very very very slightly move the thumbstick to get the car to turn the corner otherwise a slight movement too much and the back end comes out and you end up loosing all your speed and understeering. You can’t even adjust the control settings either, you can change the button configuration but there is no option to change the steering sensitivity when using a controller, there are sensitivity options for a steering wheel but none for a controller. Even the controls for the menus are bad as well! I found myself mashing the B button trying to go back on the menus but for some reason, to go back in the menus you have to press START…

The multiplayer works in the same way as the original arcade cabinets hooked up where instead of 1 player racing against 39 cars all the plays race against each other with the option of having other cars on the track, they did a very fine job with this, the only lag I had were some very rare occasions where opponent cars would shake. I did have a very strange glitch where I was in 1st, the guy in 2nd overtook me and about half a lap later the game decided that I was in first again, so the other guy had to get around the track and lap me which he managed to do without me slowing down, when he overtook me again the game recognized him as being in first.

But overall, it is a great port 800MSP, I recommend it to any Daytona USA fans and it even has a rewind feature which is becoming common in driving games these days.

Dark Souls. The controls are sluggish and you die a lot.

Two things I dislike about Dark Souls:

The targetting system is terrible.

You can't cancel double inputs (If you press R1 twice but the enemy attacks before your second attack then you do the second attack anyway)

Other than that I love it.

I couldn't even get past the first fucking level in Demon's Souls, no way am I gonna give Dark Souls a shot.

Dark Souls removes a lot of the fake difficulty in Demon Souls

There are checkpoints, for example.

Thank fuck. I would've been able to stomach Demon's Souls' difficulty if I could catch a quick break just for dying once at the end of a level.

Got back to Deus Ex after a long hiatus, enjoying it a lot more now that I have more augments and shit.

Im on the fence about Battlefield 3, I didn't like the demobeta, but my friends that had similar problems with it love the full product. Either way,I doubt EA needs my money.

I downloaded Team Fortress 2 on Steam. I don't think I'll be playing it much, though. I'm really really bad at it on the pc.

So, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is downloading right now. Couldn't pass the deal, had to get it. And soon it'll be Halloween so perfect timing.

Ratchet and Clank: All 4 one!

It's shit. The level design is shit, the enemies are shit, the story is shit and the dialogue between characters is shit. The environments look amazing and make you want to explore them, which is a pity because the game so far has been so fucking linear. And I mean extremely linear. The camera won't let you backtrack once you hit certain points, which is a feature I haven't seen in a game since Super Mario Bros.

The enemies are all dull as fuck. The challenge either comes from their numbers or the sheer volume of bullets they take before dropping. They're uninspired and mind-numbingly repetitive.

The levels are really simple. There are points that make you use a gadget to move platforms by holding circle. You have no control over the platform, there is no challenge and there is no fucking point, yet time and time again these machines appear. There are other puzzles like this that just serve no purpose beyond invoking a pathetic "neat".

The story is silly. I don't expect much from a Ratchet and Clank game, but I expect better than this. The character dialogue mid-level often feels awkward and out of place. It could do with being less random and more fixed to certain events.

This is definitely a kids game, and a fairly poor one at that. I can't recommend it to anyone. I'm especially disappointed in it given how amazing the Future Trilogy was. It's good that after 9 games they're trying to change the formula, but they should have done better. People that liked the older RaC games should keep an eye on Overstrike, Insomniacs new IP.

Oh, and you can't control the camera, either. This means that the game auto-locks targets, which is infuriating because I often disagree with what it tells me I should be shooting.

I bought Arkham Asylum and City and played each nonstop...and, as a life long batman fan, I can say that was one of the most incredible things I have ever experienced.

As a batman product, it is the perfect synthesis of The comic's history, The Nolan film's gritty realism, and the animated series' atmosphere and tone. Utterly amazing. I cannot stress enough, this is a level of greatness reserved for games like Ocarina of Time and Deus Ex.

I agree with everything dynamithix said regarding City. Though I have one complaint about Asylum, and that is the last boss. Ugh. But, the ending itself was fine. I wonder if Bob Kane or Bill Finger would've liked the games.

I had my doubts about All 4 One but I didn't think it would be that bad..:fuzemb:

Depressing, A Crack in Time was epic, the only Ratchet I held on par with Jak.

I never held them on par with eachother because they both tried to create very different things. They're too different to say one is better than the other.

I mean purely in preference, as few other platformers entertain me any more. Thank God Sly's back, I hope Jak 4 ceases to be a rumor as well...

I sure liked the demo of Sly 1 I remember playing way back when, has the series noticably decreased in quality?

Nope, it has only gotten better, in my opinion. Though time will tell when Sly 4 lands.

I thought Sly 3 was a lot worse than the first two. Sly 2 was better than the first one though.

Sly 2 was the best. Sly 3 is technically the best game, but is less fun than the second. The first is too different to really compare. Play them in order, though. I think you'll get the most out of them that way.

They're all quite fun to play and I recommend them all. I've finished them all 100% and really enjoyed myself.

Here's the important part

Are they all stealthy?

Wut.