Aussie Ben

Missed out on that gem, sadly - but I do remember reading about it on Uncle Clive. Looked hilarious.

I'm really getting bad vibes from Bully. The first thing I thought when I heard about it was "Christ, I'm glad I'M not in high school anymore." Schoolkids playing a game where gangsters kill each other is one thing, but schoolkids playing a game where they bully other schoolkids and teachers? You can't seriously expect every teenager ever to differentiate that from realism. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I liked Rockstar a lot more when they were DMA Design.

I don't know... the PS2 has the EyeToy, which singlehandedly made playing games accessible to all sorts of people who can't play games. Then there's that SingStar game, which detects how on key you are to the song you're singing. That's pretty damned impressive, if you ask me. Then there's Microsoft, who created one of the most streamlined, user friendly, and fairly well moderated internet communities via Xbox Live. Certainly nothing to sneeze at. I love Nintendo as much as the next gamer, but really - have they honestly been innovating this round? Miyamoto himself said of the EyeToy "I wish I'd thought of that first." That's a fairly big compliment.

And if you hold the Z Button during bootup, you'll hear squeaking followed by a "boing" noise and creepy children laughing. If you plug in four controllers, hold Z on all of them, and then bootup, you'll get Samurai noises. True story. I liked all the different Iguana logos, like for Turok and so on. I didn't really care much for the games, but I loved what they did with their logos.

If you haven't played an Ape Escape game, play Ape Escape 2. If you have already played the first one, you might not be interested in it unless you really liked the first one. But the option is there. Klonoa 2 is good clean fun. Erm...I loved Parappa the Rapper 2 - an amusing music game where you rap about noodles. Amplitude is another cool music game where you 'create' the different parts of songs with a spaceship by hitting the various beats. You have to keep juggling each part of the song to keep the entire song alive. There's also a shooter called Rez which is almost art - there are no sound effects in this game, every action is accented by music. So as you play and blast away enemies, you create music. Not so sure about buying it, but definitely play it at least once. Fantavision is a fun puzzle game where you make fireworks, but I'd only try for it if you can get it cheap. Flipnic is a pretty pinball game with some really great ideas. Primal is a pretty nice adventure game where you're a nice young lady who discovers that she is half demon and can turn into horrific monsters. She also has a talking gargoyle, just like in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame! Remember them? Altered Beast has you as a grumpy young man who comes out of a metal box and turns into a werewolf in the most gruesome way possible. Eyeballs popping out and all that. Later on he can turn into other monsters, including the bear with KUNG-FU GRIP. The game basically involves you beating the crap out of everything you see until it dies. It also has a storyline that tries to be deadly serious about everything, but comes off hilarious because of it. Although, I think this one only came out in Europe and Australia. Well, and Japan. But not America. Um. Also, I know you love your platformers, so pick up Sly 1 and 2, you'll love 'em. Make sure you play Sly 1 first, because then you'll play Sly 2 and go WOW THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER. If you do it the other way, you probably won't enjoy it as much. Ratchet 'n' Clank 1 and 2 are both cool, but 3 seems to be wearing it a bit thin. Don't bother with the upcoming Ratchet: Deadlocked, it's dropped the platforming in favour for shooting the shit out of everything. *sigh* If you liked Banjo (and I know you did) you'll probably love the gameplay of Jak 'n' Daxter, but possibly not the irritating characters. Don't play past Jak 'n' Daxter, it's really not worth it. Think Warrior Within. If you don't already have it, get Beyond Good and Evil, but I think you already might (though it's probably better to get that on Xbox - no mucking about with memory cards). *phew* Does that help?

Actually, the GameCube's philosophy seemed to be more like: "Let's whack a backpack on our main franchise characters, whore out the rest of our franchises (after all, three Mario Parties are better than one!), insist that linking up four of our portable systems to our lukewarm-selling console is a much better idea than online gameplay and bring out more novelty control methods that are only used in approximately six games in total. Oh, and apparently there's these third party things. Oh, and only Japan can have another Kururin game." Ignore the fact that I'm a Nintendrone that bought those godforsaken bongos (x2) anyway. *sigh* Well, at least we're getting the nice European track list in the Donkey Kongas. I liked Grabbed by the Ghoulies - only in small doses though, I couldn't play it all in one go. Oh, and Katamari was nice. Oh, and Mojib-Ribbon was a bizzare but entertaining...thing. Luigi's Mansion was nice, and probably would have been appreciated more if it wasn't released at launch. And for some reason, I was utterly obsessed with Pokemon Channel. You can watch Psyduck reading the news. Which consists of nothing but him repeating the syllables of his name over and over. It's hypnotic. And then you have Meowth as the roaming reporter, and he ends every report with: "And there you have it. Dat ends my report from da scene!" in his Brooklyn accent. God, Meowth is awesome.

Core also made Bubba and Stix, which was really cool, but I could never get past the second level. Beautiful looking game though, and a really nice idea.

I really liked the intros to the Parappa games and Um Jammer Lammy. Man, those games were great fun.

"I know. My friends tell me that all the time." It's definitely T-Shirt material, I reckon.

There are some hilarious posts from earlier on, such as when Tim was trying to get his copyrighted catch phrase to take off, and when he boasted about his mobile phone's wallpaper being better than yours, and when the DFAC became sentient and apologised for threatening to destroy all humankind, and the whole mouse business.

Went back to Psychonauts last night. Sheegor's image of you is hilarious. I also like how the memory vaults see you. Oh, and you can use Clairvoyance on Sasha and Milla later, even though they are sans cerveaux. I like how Milla sees you.

Can't quite put my finger on it, but I don't seem to trust Ain't It Cool as much as I used to.

You know what? I really don't know! I'll have to stop making novelty avatars of myself and check when I get home tonight.

I'm guessing that Phincus, like me, may have the Xbox version of the game instead of the PC version. Believe me, I'd love to go poking around through the files and check this kind of stuff out (you've definitely piqued my interest here) but as much as I love Psychonauts, I simply can't rationalize plonking down another $60 to $80 for a different version of a game that I already have, especially when I have exhausted my funds on 2HB patches, floaty pens, game soundtracks, and Whispering Rock T-Shirts. So I guess I'll have to live without it.

If you take a look at the artwork you unlock for Lunfishopolis, you'll see one of the pieces has a silhouetted giant D'art running rampant through the town - you can tell it's him due to his giant cap. I wonder what the populace would have called him? "Capplor"?

It's like the Dracula Mr. Burns shadow. If you got to see it in motion, you'd see it was doing "Rock the Cradle" with a yo-yo and stuff.

Would screenshots be considered free Doom 2 downloads? Cause I know where you can find plenty of those.

Wait, NOW I get it. Jawless is in there because he's got a SCARRED FACE. ...possibly.

Has anyone done a "bloodbath" joke yet? No? Well then, (No. - The Management)

I have gotten this game in Japanese. I can't read Japanese, and I think I'm feeding my dogs poison. I have two dogs - one is a beagle called Guybrush (well, "Gybrush" because of the character limit), the other is a black...dog called LeChuck. At the moment, LeChuck is viciously attacking Guybrush into submission.

NOOOO!! MY TERRIBLE SECRET!

I thought it was nice that they put the first screenshot in a "Winter" and "Summer" flavour so that it doesn't matter which hemisphere you're in to enjoy it. ...oh wait, nevermind, it's two different screens. As for Prince of Persia, all I can say is The Man In The Iron Mask really let himself go.

I apologise in advance for linking to the sort-of-review I did for Nintendogs for this site. Not trying to whore the site out, just linking to the thing I wrote because I am too lazy to rejig what I said there for this post so that it sounds the same-but-different-enough. In summation, yes, I am linking to a site I do work for, but it's out of laziness, not an attempt to get more hits. ...and that ends my report from the scene!

It's strange - I tried to play Metal Gear Solid and it didn't interest me at all, but Boktai? Man, that's some great fun-in-the-sun right there. And you get to do some vampire bustin'.

Excellent, another Psychonauts thread. I wanted to comment on this, but I didn't want to make a new thread. I have just been digging through the DFAC archives (specifically August 1, 2002) and all of a sudden the comment makes a whole lot more sense. That is all. You may now continue your Psychonauts PS2 discussion.