Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (360): COMPLETED! AGAIN!

Only this time with less emeralds (none, in fact – I didn’t even try) and more speed (achievements for completing Chemical Plant 1 and the whole game quickly – GET!). I then had a go playing online in VS mode. Oh dear. Whoever hosts, wins. This seems to be a common thing with these Sega XBLA games (see also Streets of Rage 2). If you’re not hosting, there’s a second delay between pressing a button and the action being carried …

Timeshift (Demo) (360)

Another day, another FPS with a “gimmick”. Timeshift‘s gimmick is, as the name suggests, the ability to shift time. A bit. You can slow time, stop time for a couple of seconds, or reverse time (which didn’t seem to do anything when I tried it). Aside from that, this just seems like a very generic shooter. It wasn’t awful: being able to blow up and shoot away walls was great, and there were a few puzzles where you have to …

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (360): COMPLETED!

Seeing as I’d left Sonic “parked” on Wing Fortress, I wasn’t surprised to finish this almost immediately after starting to play it today. Super Sonic made short work of the boss at the end of Wing Fortress, and Metal Sonic and Eggman proved to be no challenge at all. However, although I got the achievement for completing the game, I need to go back and do it again, only more quickly! There’s an achievement for doing Chemical Plant 1 in …

Assorted 360 Demos (360)

Yes, time again to catch up on some demos that I’ve downloaded recently… Cyberball 2072Rubbish. Hated it on the Megadrive, and although this is a conversion of the superior arcade original, it’s still rubbish. American Football games are all crap, and this one adds crap robots to double how crap it is. Amazing. Fatal Fury SpecialHmm. It’s not awful, but with Street Fighter II and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 already available on XBLA, it isn’t really wanted. The Fatal Fury …

Carcassonne (360)

You know, I do play this a lot more often than I normally report on. It’s a regular “a couple of goes before bed” game. Anyway, played two rounds with my wife, and won both. I always seem to score badly through the game as she picks up huge castles and long roads, and then make a killing with carefully planned farms.

Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground (Demo) (360)

Oh my! First skate. and now this! Amazing! Firstly, let me just say one thing: TONY HAWK AND SKATE ARE NOT THE SAME TYPE OF GAME. It really annoys me when people say that TH games are redundant now that skate. is here, and it does everything TH games should have done long ago. This is not true. Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground is, like all TH games, an arcade game. skate. is a simulation. Like how Gran Turismo isn’t Outrun …

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (360)

It was only fairly recently that I completed this for the Wii. So why get it for the 360 as well? Because it’s Sonic, of course! (NB: Rule of “It’s Sonic, of course!” does not apply to Sonic Heroes, Sonic and the Secret Rings or Sonic the Hedgehog 3D) So I’ve managed to complete Chemical Plant Zone, having nabbed all the Chaos Emeralds before the end of Chemical Plant 1. It really helps not having picked Tails to accompany me. …

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Wii)

I actually bought this on the Wii’s Virtual Console on Friday when it was released, but apart from a very brief play, I didn’t really get into it right away. Today, though, I made a proper start on it (which involved deleting my saved state data, as the display was shaking horrifically, in the same way it does with Kid Chameleon, but it’s OK now), and by the end of the second act of Hydrocity Zone I’d already managed 6 …

Mercury Meltdown Revolution (Wii)

It’s a bit tricky now, it seems. Having finished all of the 4th lab, I’m now onto the 5th (the Geo Lab, I think), and it’s a big step up. Amongst other things, so far I’ve had to navigate hundreds of angled conveyors, and split a blob into three and keep a track of all of the bits. However, I have unlocked all of the “party” games (I say “party” as, although that’s what the game calls them, they’re all …

Yahoo! robot! most! popular! browser!

DYSWIST? Anyway, I’ve just had a look at my site logs for this week and something slightly shocking and Yahoo-shaped seems to have occurred: It doesn’t surprise me that there have been so many individual robots in the list, but that Yahoo figure is a bit high, don’t you think? Almost 60% of my week’s hits have been from Yahoo? What are they doing? Also interesting is the decline of Internet Explorer. Firefox and Mozilla combined are now somewhat ahead …

Mario Party 8 (Wii)

It seems an hour and a half is the going rate for a two-player game of this. Today’s board was “Koopa’s Town”, or something named similarly, and was somewhat different to any of the other boards I’d played (even on previous Mario Party games). You see, there are hotels along the board, and as you pass them, you invest coins in them. Whoever has the most coins invested, owns the hotel. However, if the total number of coins invested (by …

Creating an RSS feed using PHP

Doesn’t the title of this post just fill you with thoughts of fun and excitement? Of things you love to do on warm, sunny days? Of course it does. On Friday evening, I thought (as you do), “I know! I’m going to create my own RSS feed in PHP!”. And promptly did. Hurrah! Thing is, it turned out to be a lot harder than I expected, due to the lack of full and/or correct information on the internet. Here then, …

Mercury Meltdown Revolution (Wii)

I’m now half way through the 4th lab (Electro Lab, I think), and things are getting difficult now. There are things chasing me, blocks that move that I have to block the path of to get them to go the way I want, but they leave a trail of slime that kills me, and levels where I have to direct two lots of blobs at once are becoming more common. I’ve unlocked all bar one of the party games now …