Blimey, this game is dull. I killed the tree man (saving Uncle ForgotHisName), and then made it back to The Badlands, where I had to kill two tanks using one half of the technique used to kill the tree. Then it was off to Waterfall Place, where I found another Shadow Thing, which I had to kill using the exact same method as the previous two I’d found. I’ve now got Major Ruin back, in addition to Ash the dragon …
On the 4th of March 2001, I posted this message to uk.games.video.misc: I had a thought today. After seeing the new issue of Zzap!64, and being a reader of www.ys3.co.uk, I wondered if a load of bods from ugvm fancied doing a multiformat web-based magazine. Maybe every few months – you know, some reviews, some news, some letters, etc? Well, it was just a thought. Show Edge/IGN/GamesRadar/etc how to do it properly? I’m not suggesting I “take the reins”, but …
James Langmead (or Jim, jimlang, or jil depending on how you knew him) was a regular poster on the newsgroup comp.sys.sinclair, World of Spectrum, assorted other retro gaming forums, and chatter on IRC Spectrum channels. He also set up and maintained Speccy Spoilers (currently down), a site which archived Spectrum game endings for people too crap to complete the games themselves. Or something. I’ve known him, as much as you know anyone online, for almost 10 years, mainly through comp.sys.sinclair …
“What is this?” I hear you cry, “He’s bought Kameo? Even though he has publicly slated it on many occasions, and absolutely hated the demos?”. Yes, gentle reader, this is correct. In my defence, it was only £6.95 and I can’t resist a bargain, no matter how crap the item is (see Lady Cruncher). And I thought, it’s only fair to actually play the full game if I’m so hard on it. And oh, was I so right. OK. It …
WWII FPS = yawn. This one more so than others. I mean, you get three characters to choose from, but only one is capable of opening doors. Cutting barbed wire, yeah – you need the guy with bolt cutters. Climbing a rope, OK, so mad climbingz skillz might be required. But opening a door? So much for realism. And Germans who spawn right in front of you is hardly realistic either.
Getting bored with this now. I’ve got 43 gold bricks, and need 60 to open up Lego City, apparently, but getting there is pretty soul destroying. Basically, I have to redo all the levels I’ve done previously to get a True Jedi rating, then redo them all again in Free Play (and get True Jedi there too), then redo them all yet again in Super Story mode. And then, if I’ve missed any Minikits, I need to do the levels …
Played some more this afternoon. Firstly, I had a go in two-player, working though some of Episode IV. My wife was player two. And, there are problems. Not with her, but with the camera forcing one or the other player to be pushed into holes, or behind or under things preventing either player from progressing. In all, it was pretty hard work just to get to the end of the second chapter. Later, I played through the rest of the …
With the main story complete, I’m mopping up the extras now. First up, was the Super Story version of Episode IV. Which was crap. It’s basically just all the chapters of Episode IV one after the other with no breaks and no extras. It also only notched my completion percentage up by just 0.2%, even though it took me over an hour to play. What a waste of time. After that, I finally managed to unlock the Bounty Hunter missions, …
I’ve never really give this game much time before. I have it for the Megadrive, but having spent five minutes with it and realising it’s a platformer and not a proper sequel to the original, I didn’t play it again. But, apparently, it’s still great. According to lots of people on t’t’t’tinternet anyway. So I bought it. And they’re right. It’s different, but the humour from the original is still there. It is, however, waaaay harder, as I only reached …
One of the most underrated and ignored platformers of all time, and today it appeared on the Wii Virtual Console. I loved it, but my only gripe was it was really long, and there was no way of saving your progress. Well, now there is, thanks to the VC’s Save States! Sadly, though, all is not well. For some reason the screen flickers horribly. So much so that the game is virtually unplayable. As a result, I managed three levels …
It might only be three days of play, but my saved game says 12 hours. Cripes. So I finished off Episode VI. The first three missions were really long, but the final couple were really short – a fight with the Emporer, and a Millenium Falcon strike on the new Death Star. And after that? It was complete! However, there’s more to collect and stuff. So I went back to Episode IV, Chapter 1, and completed it in Free Play …
Worked my way through all of Episode V today. I’m not really enjoying the spaceship flying/shooty sections all that much. They don’t gel all that well with the rest of the game. The sequence on Hoth was OK, but it wasn’t made clear as to what you were supposed to do. This resulted in my shooting down AT-STs and drone things for a good hour before I realised you had to blow a hole in a wall with a bomb …
This was today’s addition to Xbox Live Arcade. And it’s rubbish. I was hoping for something along the lines of Micro Machines, but instead, we got something worse than the monstrosity that is Hot Wheels: World Race. Disappointing.
OK. First up, it’s not really football. You have a ball, and you score goals, but there the similarity ends. You have powerups, special moves (some of which let you score six goals at once!) and it’s totally insane. Anyway. I played through the tutorial section, which actually took the best part of an hour, and then dived straight into some online games. I really should have practised offline a bit, though. I played two people, both in Best of …