Aussie Ben

Imagine trying to play Super Monkey Ball's EX levels with a bloody stump of an arm on the Control Stick instead of a finger, and that's about the level of control I experience with it.

If I get the DS version of Katamari Damacy (and let's face it, I will), then I'll be comitting sacrilage and controlling the game with the D-Pad. Because there is NO WAY I am using that disgusting thumb thingy. Ick. Hell, Mario 64 DS put me off using the Stylus or Thumb Thingy entirely, so I became very good at controlling an eight year old game designed around an analogue Control Stick with a digital D-Pad.

The biggest demo I downloaded was the Curse of Monkey Island demo that had the movie included. It was MASSIVE! ...comparitively massive, at the time. It was what, 12 meg? That was huuuuuge (especially as I had a 56k connection at the time). As you can probably tell, I don't really download many demos. I was thinking about downloading the Still Life demo, but I thought - well, I'm going to buy it anyway - why spoil the start of the game?

Just don't cast Flame Dart at it.

Orright, here's my feeble attempt: Can anyone guess that one (keep in mind 'well-built female cyborg' was the closest option)?

I'd like to see all of the Commander Keens released for free. Let's face it, iD refuses to acknowledge the existance of the franchise anyway. "Commander Keen?! No way man, we make clever, edgy games like Doom, Quake...and....LOOK PENTAGRAMS! AREN'T WE SPOOKY!" *sigh* I miss Robo Red. He always scared me much more than any pixalated mess of brown and red in Doom did.

Has anyone seen the website Spamusement, which makes badly drawn comics out of Spam subject lines? It's made me laugh quite a bit. Particularly "bert don't sleep yet" and "the Germans have a new way of doing it". I've seen a couple of Spam subjects that I've gotten in there, too. It's made me look at my inbox in a whole new way.

Well, I bought it a week or two ago, and, in all honesty, I wasn't expecting much. I knew the basic deal - Rare makes mediocre looking puzzle game with Donkey Kong license, Rare loses Donkey Kong license, game disappears for twenty years, game reappears with badly drawn stick figure character at the helm. Still, I picked it up anyway (simply because of the novelty factor of owning a game with Mr. Pants in it). While the game's not rubbish, it's not stellar either - it's a puzzle game where you have to make rectangles or squares, the smallest size being 3x2 blocks big. There's more to it than that, but my brain isn't working properly at the moment. If it was released without a license (a la the original Tetris) it definitely wouldn't hold up on its own. But what reels me in is the presentation. All the art is deliberately drawn badly, in an awkward stick figure fashion. Character colours are out of the lines, and everything animates in (as IGN called it) "Squigglevision", where all the lines are jerking all over the place. There's heaps of voice samples from an overly British sounding character (Mr. Pants, presumably) remarking "Splendid!", "Super!" and "I can seee you!" at various points in the menus. Mr. Pants refers to Puzzle mode as "My brain hurts!" and Marathon mode as "Better get fit!". If you go to change your save slot, he exclaims "Leave my pants alone!" Even the manual makes me laugh: You'll be penalized, and then you'll be in trouble, boy! Or girl. You could be a girl. Well, it amuses me, anyway. Sure, only two copies of the game have probably sold at all (one sitting on my desk here), and the game is a nice distraction but nothing groundbreaking, but I like it all the same. Mr. Pants oozes charm, and it'd be great (but incredibly unlikely) to see him in another game. ...and that ends my report from the scene!

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying it's of Superman 64 quality or anything. I really like the puzzle mode, where you're given a preset board of blocks and a limited amount of blocks to solve it with. I've always liked things like that, like the puzzle modes in Tetrisphere or Tetris Attack. Wipeout isn't too bad either - you're given three minutes to clear away all the existing mess from the whole board. Marathon would have to be my least favourite of the three, but that's probably because I'm so incredibly crap at it.

(Sorry, I'm playing catch up here) Personally, I really enjoyed Curse. Sure, it wasn't "Ron Gilbert Presents The Third Monkey Island Game", but it didn't seem to suffer because of it. The guys did a brilliant job of working their way out of the Python-esque ending that Lechuck's Revenge threw at you (best ending ever for a video game, I reckon - or definitely up there near the top), while getting back into the swing of things really quickly. It also had the Scrooge McDuck/Mr. Ed voice actor in there. How cool is that? The one thing I don't like about Curse is that Elaine agrees to marry Guybrush, when it was quite clear in Revenge that there were some serious issues with that relationship - namely, that Guybrush is a pig, and he only is interested in using Elaine to get what he wants (but let's face it, that's every adventure game character's motivation, isn't it?). I thought that having Elaine and Guybrush hook up was really out of character for both of them. At any rate, I liked it much better than Escape (which I refuse to acknowledge the existence of. Sorry.). Anyway, back to the topic, how about...ooer, all the good games have already been taken...er: That Toonstruck Sequel? That looked like it was going to be fun, at least if the first game was anything to go by. ...well, I liked it.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/psychonauts/preview_6109729.html Gamespot has updated with some more information on everyone's favourite non-Japanese delightfully quirky game, Psychonauts. Details on basic game mechanics and the introductionary level are provided, along with two movies - one of the game's introduction, and the other of a developer interview with Tim Shafer Schafer.

Whoa. This trailer has hyped me up even more for the game, if that's even possible. The head-trainer-guy-with-cork-in-head sounds like the soldier guy from Hobo 13 in Invader Zim. The dialogue is brilliant, I might add. "My name..." "...starts with a 'D'!" "...is Razputin!" I hate to wish away the rest of the year, but honestly, 2005 can't come soon enough. Also, the "Memory Vault" section has scans of the US OXM article about the game. Which is good, because I don't live in the US so I couldn't read the US magazine. But now I can! I love the Internet.

Yeah, I've had my own brush with animutation or whatever it's called. I did that in two weeks flat -- and abandoned all of my uni work in the process. I must say though, I got more out of the two weeks from mucking around in Flash then I did out of that entire computer course. Not to mention that song is STILL stuck in my head. I absolutely love Katamari Damacy, or as it's known around the office, "Calamari Dalmation". We had the Japanese version brought in for Game of the Week, and it was so popular that people have been begging for it to return. So, as soon as I get the English version, it's going to get an encore performance. I bought the soundtrack, too! It's hilarious to listen to while smashing into cars in Burnout 3.

Crimson Skies was my purchase to tide me over until Burnout 3 arrived. It was great for the two days that I played it. But hey -- add me to your friends list and we can play online sometime! I'd love to be overwhelmingly defeated in an online game. It's the only way I seem to be able to play. My GamerTag is exactly the same as my forum...name...thingy.

Okay, I've been a lurker for far, far too long. Let me make amends by showing you an early concept box art of Psychonauts that follows the Tim Schafer High Sales Guidelines. It also has a picture of a unicorn on it.