Astromariner
Going the right way for a smacked bottom
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Happy Birthday Bamba!
I was going to start you a thread but I didn't want to get some sort of "serial birthday thread starter" reputation. Did you have a good time out on the town? Was everyone singing rude songs about Dick Advocaat?
Back on topic, my number one shiny golden nugget of advice today is: Don't buy MarioKart Doubledash. It is shit. And they've axed Toad (why? why?) and given that twitzy-twee bint the Princess her own track and an even more irritating (if that is possible) sidekick. What a jip. There's no skill involved in negotiating any of the tracks, you spend the entire race getting twatted by everyone else, and for some unfathomable reason there's no jump button anymore. It hasn't got the same feel as the old MarioKart either - that had a uniquely psychadelic cuteness to it. This is just fluff, freshly plucked from the belly-button of Queen Fluff of Fluffsylvania.
quote:Originally posted by Astromariner: Happy Birthday Bamba!
Thank you Astro, it was actually on Friday but you couldn't have known that and I appreciate the sentiment. Good choice on the Happy Birthday thread as well, those things are the epitomy of gayness. My birthday night out went very well indeed and included an unscheduled visit to The Cathouse in a frenzy of old skool-ery. I didn't get home until six in the morning though due to the complete and utter dearth of fucking taxis at three in the morning. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that Mrs B's got very short legs and tends towards whining when made to walk any kind of distance. Still, a good night out was had by all. As for MarioKart, I'm getting it anyway as it'll be a belated birthday present from Mrs Bamba on Tuesday when she gets paid although your review does dperess me somewhat. Hopefully you're just wrong.
Edit to add: didn't the princess always have her own track? I'm pretty sure she did in the N64 version at least.
quote:Originally posted by Astromariner: Back on topic, my number one shiny golden nugget of advice today is: Don't buy MarioKart Doubledash. It is shit. And they've axed Toad (why? why?) and given that twitzy-twee bint the Princess her own track and an even more irritating (if that is possible) sidekick. What a jip. There's no skill involved in negotiating any of the tracks, you spend the entire race getting twatted by everyone else, and for some unfathomable reason there's no jump button anymore. It hasn't got the same feel as the old MarioKart either - that had a uniquely psychadelic cuteness to it. This is just fluff, freshly plucked from the belly-button of Queen Fluff of Fluffsylvania.
Don't be deceived Astro, keep going with it if you haven't already traded it.
I to was mucho pissed at the removal of Toad, the change in the points scoring system, and the lack of jumpage. But don't give up on it yet.
Play with the heavy mob (DK, Bowser, Wario, and their partners) on 100cc, and practice powersliding with the shoulder buttons. Get Mr Astro to play collaborative two player as your weapons person. I'm sure this will help.
Special Cup is opened once you've clocked the first Grand Prix's on 100cc, and has good courses.
I am currently still trying to clock special Cup on 100cc and it's lots of fun.
It is flawed though. If you drop behind you don't seem to get the chance to come back through power ups as was possible previously, you get mauled by the other drivers. Many of the tracks just don't feel as good to drive on as in previous iterations. Racing line doesn't seem to play as significant part as it should.
But I'm giving it more time. I will keep you updated on my thoughts.
SSX, not my bag at all though, so that's getting refunded or traded this week.
A belated Happy Birthday to Bamba.
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The best game I have played recently is Max Payne 2 which totally rocks bells. Everything is improved on from the first game- there's a better narrative, better set pieces, better level design and better bullet time. Plus there's a hell of a lot more variety in the gameplay. And then there's the crazy physics system which creates absolute carnage during the biggest shoot outs. And the dream seqeuences were actually good, rather than being utterly shit. Oh it's good. Oh it's ever so, ever so good.
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SSX3 is genius, I am in love with this game, utterly awed. The only place I am happy is inside this game. I had to move the GameCube from my bedroom back downstairs so that my consumption of this game would be public and therefore reigned in. Having the Cube inches from my bed is like hiding vodka bottles in the cistern and curved hipflasks down the sides of my furry moonboots. Fucking fuck. The best thing, apart from being absolutely brilliant at this game of course, is that when you have finished twisting in the sky trailing stars and magic, you get loads of money and you get to go and buy a new outfit! I made Kaori blonde yesterday and she looks gr9. I wish I lived in SSX3. :little cry:
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BR, please can we have more of your thoughts on Viewtiful Joe? I really want this for Christmas - have heard good things about it from people who know. And now I want to hear from you, hahaha. Also: Soul Calibre 2 - worth it, considering I already have Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance? Also: is time spent playing computer games time lost or wasted, or does the experience itself have intrinsic value?
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Isn't Viewtiful Joe utterly, insanely and frustrating difficult? Not in general like but in the total dearth of savepoints meaning you end up repeating loads of stuff all the time when you do things like die during a Boss fight and then having to slog through the entire preceding level again? That's what I heard anyway which put me off a bit. I've just finished Starfox Advenures which means that F-Zero GX or Judge Dredd versus Judge Death* is next on my list of conquests until MarioKart turns up.
*Thorn, I suspect this would be right up your alley by the way
Oh, and thanks for the Birthday wishes folks.
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On a general gaming tip (and this is for PC and Gamecube peeps) apparently the new Prince of Persia game is currently blowing off socks all over the place in America. It's also got an unlockable, fully playable version of the original game in there somewhere which makes it even more of an essential purchase.
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Soul Calibre 2 is the best weapons based fighting game around, well worth it, very big single player mode that trains you to play. Excellent.
Viewtiful Joe is awesome in it's very pretty simplicity. It is an arcade platform game with stylish funny fighting and very pretty cartoon graphics. The plot and cut scenes provide excellent comedy value. As you progress you get increased powers to do different moves involving the slowing down and speeding up of time and scoring Viewtiful bonus points for how cool your asskicking looks. It has very good replay value.
It is however quite annoyingly tough in places (although this could also be seen to be appealing), and save points are few.
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quote:Originally posted by Bamba: *Thorn, I suspect this would be right up your alley by the way
Meh. I played the demo and I was a bit unimpressed I did like the Mega City 4 setting n all but what I played of it, and the other reviews I read didn't really inspire me. I may give it a spin when it comes down in price, tho'.
Currently, I'm playing Half Life I bought this ages ago, but never really got that into it. I figured I'd play it through to see what all the fuss is about, and to bring me up to speed on the sequel. I'm about 3/4 of the way through, and I feel like I'm still waiting for the game to begin. So far, it seems as though I've spent hours playing to the same objective I had at the start: Get out of the Black Mesa complex. Nothing seems to have changed since the beginning. I haven't really learned anything except that aliens are invading and the army don't want people getting out. And that's about it really. Can someone explain to me why this game is so good?
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I played MarioKart the other night and found it to be shit and inane. I hate that little Mario fucker and all the games associated with him. That stupid one with the water-sprayer and the coins? Luigi's Mansion? JEEZASS.
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I downloaded Max Payne 2 yesterday, but it didn't work. Mercedes Benz World Racing did though, so that kept me happy for a few hours. Good ole broadband...
I'm also playing Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped on the ickle PSX in the bedroom.
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By the way Bamba, let me know what you think about F Zero. Got it briefly but traded it for SSX. Managed to do the first championship on all of difficulty settings and some of the story games, but beyond that it was simply too fast and too bendy, and made me go all cross-eyed - like Astro on E.
Going to give Mariokart a week to see how I feel about it, possibly involving a long session round my mates Marc's on Friday.
Very news about Prince of Persia.
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: The best game I have played recently is Max Payne 2
I've had this for about 2 months... I suppose its time I install it, eh?
Did like the first and your review has convinced me to try the 2nd.
You should be a journalist or something...
[ 17.11.2003, 04:17: Message edited by: sabian ]
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quote:Originally posted by MiscellaneousFiles: I downloaded Max Payne 2 yesterday, but it didn't work.
I'm probably teaching my granny to suck eggs here but you did remember to crack the .exe didn't you? There should be a cracked exe somewhere in the stuff you'd downloaded or you can go to Gamecopyworld for all your fixed exe needs.
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quote:Originally posted by Bamba: I'm probably teaching my granny to suck eggs here but you did remember to crack the .exe didn't you?
D'oh! I so dumb, and deleted it in anger. I shall download it again!
I also got Max Payne 1 but it wouldn't get past level 1. Also when you download a game is it always the case that you do not get the music due to no CD? I am not going to pay for games to get the music.
I also got Serious Sam, which is my game of the moment. Bug dumb superfast OldSchool shooter, although not so dumb in that it is teaching me Egyptology. Unless they are making it up. "Sam, I am!"Posts: 2689
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quote:Originally posted by Raz: Also when you download a game is it always the case that you do not get the music due to no CD?
It's not always the case... If you get a game without video or music, it is considered a 'RIP' because all non-essential info is 'RIPPED' out of it to make it a smaller download.
To get the full game, look for ISO or Clone images.
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quote:Originally posted by Raz: Also when you download a game is it always the case that you do not get the music due to no CD? I am not going to pay for games to get the music.
Depends. If you've downloaded some kind of zip or rar which you uncompress onto your hard drive and install from there then you will losy anything that was intended to be read from the CD as you simply don't have the CD. That's not very common these days though becuase, with the advent of broadband, there's no need to rip out all this stuff to try and keep the filesize down. What you'll mostly get these days is a .bin and .cue file in which is an exact copy of the game CD which can be burned onto CD or used in conjuntion with something like DaemonTools to run from your hard drive. In this case, you've got an exact copy of the original game CD so you won't be missing music or anything like that.
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Well I downloaded the two disc images (.bin & .cue) and burnt them to CD-Rs. now when I insert the install disc, it spins up, does the whole auto-run thing and brings up a DOS window which instantly disappears. I've tried running the .exe files on the CD and the same thing happens. So I can't install it...
The only odd thing I noticed when I burnt the CD-Rs was that the first one was about 800Mb - ie more than the capacity of a 700Mb CD-R. Still Nero burnt it and said it was successful.
quote:Originally posted by MiscellaneousFiles: and burnt them to CD-Rs.
Quite burning the CDs mate unless you plan on archiving them... It's a waste of media... Use Daemon Tools... It creates a virtual DVD/CD player and you just mount the images to it... No need to burn anymore.
quote:Originally posted by MiscellaneousFiles: The only odd thing I noticed when I burnt the CD-Rs was that the first one was about 800Mb - ie more than the capacity of a 700Mb CD-R. Still Nero burnt it and said it was successful.
When burning an image, it doesn't matter what the 'Disk space' size says versus your CD media... If it is an image, it'll burn back to the CD as per the original... I've gotten 1gb movies onto a 700mb CD... As long as the movie is less than 80minutes, that's all the matters.
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Actually I'm trying to archive downloads as much as possible as I'm getting frightfully low on disk space. I've got two full 60Gb drives in my main PC, with another 40Gb on my other two machines...
I wonder why it didn't work. Never mind - another version from BitTorrent is downloading as we speak. Perhaps I'll try the DaemonTools to test it before making coasters this time though. Thanks for the tip.
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Your copy sounds exactly the same as mine Misc (i.e. bizarrely massive file sizes which then go on to burn correctly onto a 700MB CD) except that mine installed fine. Admittedly, I did install mine using DaemonTools then burnt the images onto CD retrospectively but two of my mates borrowed my CD's and installed the game okay. Definitely try DaemonTools to see if it works that way as then you know it's something to do with the way you burned the discs.
To Thorn: I installed Max Payne fine as well but I got it for free and about a month before you did so ner ya smug fucker.
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I've been enjoying the XP Pro add-in that I discovered a few days ago. It's called "Press F1 to enter Setup", which is a bit of a misleading title, as it doesn't even come close to describing how emotionally engaging this game is. I have played it for days on end, and the good thing is, is that like NokiaGame, the effects of this game bleed through into reality. If you make a wrong move, then you really can destroy your real life. It also has one of those new gaming engines that makes sure that it is different every time you play it - layouts, puzzles and enemies are unpredictable and very fiendish. The best bit? You get it free with every copy of XP!
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