Absolutely Ridiculous Message Board Posts #392 May 9, 2010
Posted by Matthew in Feature.Tags: Ridiculous
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On EDGE magazine’s scoring system:
“They need to review the single player and online separately, especially for 360 games, which follow the trend of 1 hour single player, 10 hour online”
Absolutely Ridiculous Message Board Posts #475 May 2, 2010
Posted by Matthew in Feature.Tags: Ridiculous
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On The Saboteur:
“Erk. This game only got 5 in Edge. Avoid.”
Game Of The Year Awards 2009 January 5, 2010
Posted by Matthew in Awards, Feature.Tags: Awards
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Back after a two-month hiatus caused by playing about stuff rather than writing about stuff. Much like last year, I’ve decided to do my own awards – at least that way they’ll all be correct (bleoww). Couldn’t be arsed with too many categories, genres and sub-genres etc. The games in the platform-specific categories are platform exclusives – just because. So onto the results below…
Games Of The Year So Far August 15, 2009
Posted by Matthew in Awards, Feature, Wii, Xbox 360.Tags: Games
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We are more than half way through the year now (I actually meant to post this a month ago) and it’s been a pretty good one for games so far with the Wii in particular having a surprisingly strong line-up. While this will probably be a little different at the end of the year, click below for a list of my favourite games of the year so far (in no particular order)
Random Gaming Irritations #395 June 27, 2009
Posted by Matthew in Feature, Gaming Irritations, Wii.Tags: Irritations
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Wii game that use the pointer functionality in the menus but not in game, leading to a lot of annoying switching around.
Gaming Related Motivational Posters June 18, 2009
Posted by Matthew in Feature, Stuff.Tags: Motivational Posters
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I remember there being a massive thread on NeoGAF a while ago in which members designed their own gaming-related motivational posters, I don’t have the link but it can probably be easily found via Google. Here are a few that I saved, all credit to the folk that created them etc.
E3: The Games I Can’t Wait For… June 10, 2009
Posted by Matthew in E3, Feature, Halo 3, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360.Tags: E3
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…but I’ll have to. Now that it’s over and I’ve had a good amount of time to digest all the information, I thought I’d write some stuff up about it. It was a hell of a lot better than last years underwhelming, down-sized event and was a return to the E3 of old. Rather than boring summaries of each conference, I’ll just talk about the games that I’m most interested in. Click below for the good stuff.
Random Gaming Irritations #228 May 28, 2009
Posted by Matthew in Feature, Gaming Irritations.add a comment
Wii games that still require you to use pointer controls in the menus, despite your chosen method being holding the Wii remote sideways NES-style. I’m looking at you, PUNCH-OUT!!
Earthworm Jim, Or Why Nostalgia Can Be A Bad Thing May 14, 2009
Posted by Matthew in Feature, Rant, Retro, Wii.Tags: Nostalgia
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What happened here then? Back in the day I used to love this game on the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis, for the Yanks) and it was probably one of my post-played games on the system. I was attracted to it by it’s unique, cartoony visuals which stood out at the time. The character designs were great and I enjoyed the slapstick humour – things like whipping a crow with your body resulting in an explosion of feathers and a beak always raised a smile. 
The platforming aspects were decent and overall the gameplay was fun.
Fast-forward fifteen years or so and I have 800 spare Wii points on the Shopping Shopping channel. while browsing through the available Mega Drive games I came across Earthworm Jim and decided to buy it, remembering how much I had enjoyed it previously all those years ago. A few minutes later and I find it to be a very frustrating experience. The movement and controls in general felt clunky and awkward. The enemies annoying and cheap, the first boss in particular was a right pain in the ass and just seemed to soak up the damage I was doing to him. The visuals and sound effects (especially the whipping noise) were still as good as I remembered, but on the whole, it wasn’t the brilliant platformer I loved back in the day.
Of course back when I first played it I was a hell of a lot more forgiving for all the negatives previously mentioned, and very naive. 
Looking back on the game, and from what I’ve got after playing it again, it’s just an average platformer living off it’s impressive visuals and quirky characters. I wonder how well received a similar game would be today on XBLA or WiiWare, for example. Would people be as forgiving now as they were back then? Surely not. I also played the sequel on the Mega Drive but my memory of that is rather hazy, all I remember was a section where you became a blind cave salamander for some reason or other. Incidentally my experience with this game on the Virtual Console has probably put me off of buying the sequel when it is inevitably released. Also, it’s worth adding that the Earthworm Jim cartoon was fantastic. Pokemon aside (that was in a league of its own, obviously) this was probably the most faithful game-to-cartoon adaptation I ever watched, the theme tune was great.
Currently Playing…(Wii Special) May 1, 2009
Posted by Matthew in Currently Playing, Feature.Tags: Currently Playing
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I’ve been spending less time with my 360 and more time with Wii in the past few weeks. Since Nintendo finally bothered to sort out the storage problem (that shouldn’t even have existed in the first place), I decided to download a few WiiWare games too now that I had the space.
Little King’s Story
I bought this after reading pretty much universal praise from everywhere that mentioned it – 9/10s from Edge, gamesTM, GameCentral and Eurogamer. Playing like a cross between Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon and Pikmin, your aim is to expand your kingdom by defeating enemies and taking over their land. As well as this, you must keep your citizens happy and occupied by assigning them various jobs to do such as farmers and guards. There is also a decent story element to the game and you are given plenty of quests to do. I’ve put around four or five hours into it so far and definitely enjoying it. I’m getting vibes of the same charm that made Little Big Planet’s characters so likable.
World of Goo
I tried out the demo of this on Steam way back when it came out at the end of the last year, it was alright bit didn’t blow me away. That was probably due to me buying Peggle around the same time and being glued to that. Fast-forward to now. I had spare points burning a hole in my Wii Shopping Channel and had yet to buy a WiiWare title so I decided to give this a try. The Wii pointer controls are perfect for this game, in fact it makes me wonder why there hasn’t been a Peggle game released yet. The object of the game is to get the little goo balls to the exit by building bridges and other structures to get them there, and physics play a big part in this. There is also an extra mode with an online leaderboard of sorts where you try to build the highest tower possible. It’s got Peggle-levels of addictiveness about it.
Bit.Trip Beat
I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. It’s a rhythm game that plays like a mash-up of Pong and Rez. You control the paddle on the left of the screen by tilting the Wii remote, and you have to hit the blocks coming from the right. It starts off with a simple beat but as you progress the complexity of the music and blocks gradually increases. It can get pretty tough but it’s great. I also love the retro 8-bit visuals and the music perfectly complements it.. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it being motion controls-only but quickly found out that these offered a lot more accuracy than simply using an analogue stick or d-pad. It’s only 600 points, which is just dearer than a NES game on the Virtual console and it definitely comes recommended at that price.
