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Rainbow Six 2 was brilliant when we played against these two guys who were about as good as us. We went about six rounds; each time being tense enough to make it exciting, but never so much so that victory seemed impossible. Some excellent moments there including finding Benway cowering under the stairs gibbering into the mic about how he was too scared to move and the last couple of minutes of one round where Benway said "Let's just go out the front door, guns blazing like Billy the Kid!" We flung open the door, two shots rang out and we were both dead. As Benway pointed out, it really was just like Billy the Kid.
I think that was the same evening where Benway was gripped by an astonishing bout of energy drink mania that manifested itself in six minutes of hysterical laughter barrelling out of the comms channel, punctuated by gasps of "Help me I can't stop."
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Plus I've got to grudgingly admit that a lot of games seem to look nicer and run better on the 360.
I had high hopes for Haze but that seems to be getting something of a panning in its reviews which is kind of the final straw really. I still love my PS3 with its blu ray support, its general greatness, and some of the exclusives. But I feel like I'm missing out a little bit on the multiplayer experience, which is what next gen gaming is all about really
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So, Kate and I finished Oblivion the other night which was fun. I felt a bit disappointed in the ending. In fact probably the last 3 or 4 hours I wasn't very impressed with, but overall it was very good. (First game I've got 1000 Gamer points on!)
So, yesterday we tried to move onto Splinter Cell: Double Agent.
I was really looking forward to this as we'd both really enjoyed the first Splinter Cell on the gamecube but I found it incredibly frustrating.
I haven't played the first one for about 3 years or so, and so can't remember controls, but I assumed there would be some sort of tutorial to get you used to things, as I know in the first one there was a massive long obstacle course to teach you movement and then people wandering around to teach you stealth and stuff.
However this one - You go to training and it just says "There is this police man walking around, you have all your weapons but you can't kill him and he can't get detected" and you're left to go for it. No explanation as to what button does that. no explanation as to which of your weapons could be used to knock someone else rather than kill them. Bleh.
Then after doing these and learning nothing, into the game which again teaches you nothing and just assumed you know what you're doing.
I don't want to have to read instructions, I want the game to tell me how to do the basic things which this has done poorly.
PLUS! THE BIGGEST PROBLEM....
Obviously you're learning how to play with no instruction as to what to do and so you get detected and killed a lot and go back to the start of the mission. The start of the mission that has a cutscene. A CUT SCENE THAT YOU CANNOT FUCKING SKIP!
Why the hell has that been put in. I really don't want to watch the same thing over and over again. So, that got about 45 minutes play time and I was getting too frustrated with it so had to stop.
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Yeah, I didn't make much progress with Double Agent. I loved the first and third games in the series, but Double Agent was pretty boring, and I remember having the same frustration with the cut scene. You can save anywhere, though, so if you want to avoid having to sit through that all the time you can save immediately after the cinematic and just reload that save. I think it affects your mission rating, though, if you use too many saves.
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I played three new games this weekend, all on PC:
Trials 2 A maddening physics-based motorbike game. It's a 2D game with 3D graphics. You use the left stick to control the rider's balance, and the analogue triggers to accelerate and brake. I imagine it can be played without a gamepad, but I found the 360 controller works perfectly. It's hugely addictive - so much so that after an hour with the demo, I paid the $9.99 (17p) for the full game which features 50+ tracks, plus an online scoreboard that tells you your worldwide rank after each race. After a few hours of frustration/fun, my ranking improved from the 6,000s to the 1,900s. Still got a way to go...
Race Driver GRID The latest incarnation of the TOCA series. The graphics have been overhauled to bring it up to date with recent console releases, presumably using the same engine as the unfortunately titled Colin McRae DIRT. With graphics settings turned up, it looks pretty amazing. I've had an aversion to arcadey driving games recently, favouring sims like rFactor, GTR2 and GT Legends, but I'm warming to GRID. It's instantly accessible, fun to drive, and offers a wide range of driving disciplines from boring US muscle cars to Japanese 'togue' and good old fashioned touring cars. Most impressively the licensed cars can actually be crashed and realistically damaged. There's a Prince of Persia style rewind feature that can be used to undo a silly mistake. This helps keep the gameplay fun, but feels a bit like cheating, even though it can only be used a certain number of times in each race. It's disabled entirely on the Pro difficulty mode. Seems like there's a lot of content to explore, as with DIRT.
Lego Indiana Jones I only briefly dipped in to this one, but from what I've seen so far, it's exactly what you would expect from the makers of Lego Star Wars. The developers are obviously real fans of the franchise. The game feels highly polished and despite the simple gameplay, it's a huge amount of fun. I'm planning to hook up another gamepad at some point, to try the co-op mode with Kellifer. Also looking forward to the forthcoming Lego Batman game.
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I played Grid for a few hours over the weekend as well. Liked it, certainly seemed refreshing after the joyless braking simulator that Forza 2 eventually became.
Also played some COD. Getting into that more and more.
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I must remember to give COD4 another go. The opening scene was pretty exhilarating, but for some reason I don't think I've played the game since.
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it's good. multiplayer is quite exciting in a 'war is hell' kind of way. Bullets flying everywhere, constant air strikes, gunships. Also a good levelling up / XP system that keeps you achieving.
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Sorry, I wasn't having a dig, it's just a misconception that the word 'touge' refers to cars or a specific type or racing. It's simply a word for the mountain passes in Japan.
It's pronounced 'toe gay' although I think 'two gay' is also acceptable.
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If I went to the doctor every time I coughed up blood or when I wiped my arse the toilet paper came out red or all my moles suddenly started bleeding at the same time I'd have no time to play computer games ralph.
There are some things that you just need to man up and get over.
quote:Originally posted by MiscellaneousFiles: Viva Piņata WTF?!?!?
I tried that and it was quite enjoyable up until the time I'd had to get like the 800th set of worms to mate through the exact same mini game and I got bored. I might try it again one day as Kanye West claims it is good.
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I recently had a brief flirtation with Viva Pinata. It was ok for a bit but then I decided to start a produce farm - which was *also* ok for a bit, until I found that some of the animals I needed weren't available / unlocked yet. I couldn't be bothered with yet more repetitive gameplay just to unlock the animals so I kind of abandoned it after 5 days or so. (Real life days, not game days). Maybe I'll go back in armed with some cheat codes, but that's generally a last resort kind of thing for me, and I don't know if I'm ready to say that the game is basically dead. I'm hoping I'll get my lust for it back but that never really happens does it? You either get sucked into a game or you don't.
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