twmac

I don't even want to get into a versus discussion about this. However, if you like films like Blair Witch Project then I recommend the Spanish film '[Rec]'. Also, you listed a couple of teen slasher films so in that case I would recommend going back and watching the Nightmare on Elm Street 1 and 3, Halloween 1 and 2, and obviously 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. For Sci-Fi horror there is 'The Thing', 'Alien' and the 1970's version of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' with Donald Sutherland. Still extremely watchable (and creepy rather than out-and-out horror) 'The Night of the Living Dead' and 'Dawn of the Dead' by Romero. Hell, even the remake of Dawn of the Dead is pretty solid.

ElMuerte I have some bad news. There is a dude you have to talk to in a house very near where you fight the rampaging pumpkin head guy (he is a mission boss). You have to feed the brains to this zombified guy and he gives you stuff. Problem is that all the zombie brains that you already picked up, no longer count. They may have fixed it in a patch or something but at the time I did it until I had collected over 200 brains for that fucker before realising that I was just grinding this area needlessly and stopped.

After having listened to Chris on the GWJ podcast it is interesting to see how his opinion differs to mine. I think that Microsoft should take the hardware upgrade approach and try to be getting an attach rate amongst its existing audience. Certainly the quota of 'hardcore' has sort of reached its apex but now that they have been tied in to a console surely it makes sense to milk that audience for more money? That said, something that is certainly true is the 'something new' approach. Move is just the Wii Remote all over again. One of the Human resources people at my place of work who is 40, married, with kids and doesn't play more than the occasional Wii Sports came up to the guy sitting next to me and asked him all about kinect. It was something that captured her imagination. So, fuck, maybe Microsoft know what they are doing.

Mr. Remo was on the most recent Gamers with Jobs Podcast. It was good and staved off the thumb craving. It was quite funny listening to Chris get mildly annoyed about the new Zelda game and Corey's opinions on it and having hold himself back instead of what would have happened normally, which would be Hot Scoops or Video Games taking the piss out of him.

Well I finally put a blog together about my 12 games before Christmas and have written two pieces about Half Life 2 so far. http://twmacb.posterous.com/ Constructive criticism is always welcome. Drath, will add you on backloggery, it is always good to see some one else fighting the pile of games staring at them.

Groucho, I friended the strummer 521 gamertag. Is that the wrong one? Because Thursday is French-Canadian-racist day in Montreal I am not working and will be lounging around the X360 all day if you would like to mark out an hour to try out Greed Corps let me know. Incidentally Panzer General: Allied Assault is on the Clearance list along with a bunch of other, fine games. Worth checking out at least the demo.

Please, please, please set up a battle report. I have no interest in actually playing the game but I would love to keep track of what is going on as the (anti)social aspect of NP intrigues me greatly.

That is the only game so far that has piqued my interest; What I can't understand is why Ubisoft haven't taken End War and added Kinect/Move support? To me it seems to be the most natural step. I would love to be able to play a paired down strategy game on a console, End War would be perfect as it was already into the voice recognition stuff... Sony have gotten their marketing more right than Microsoft by implementing Move into games that their existing audience might be interested in forking out the money for. Instead Microsoft have gone for the audience that haven't bought their console (the casual Wii owners) and as a result I don't really think it is going to work. Seriously, all they would have to do is release two or three decent turn based strategy games on XBLA with Kinect as the main controls, a couple of updates to some puzzle games (Lumines, Puzzle Quest) and then some gimmicky Geometry Wars sequel with support for it and I would be there. Sure I might be in the minority on this one but pretty much everyone I know who already owns a 360 and therefore should be Microsoft's target audience is just sort of embarrassed by this.

Congrats miffy, and my condolences Murdoc. Always meant to ask you if you fancied a beer what with you being in Montreal, shame I left it too late, the mood I am in right now would not be a good time to try that anyways as my outlook on life closely mirrors synthetic Gerbil's. My life would be great if it weren't for a bunch of outside sources desperately trying to infringe themselves upon my gaming time. My work is busy and stressful, that wouldn't be a problem as that is the environment I prefer to exist in at work. However, I am having friend and housemate problems (nothing serious just something to add to stress levels) that coupled with girlfriend problems has basically brought on a hereditary disease from mother that basically only hits me when I am stressed beyond my capacities (this is the first time I have ever experienced it). The skin on my hands has dried up and started peeling, if it continues long enough it will peel to the point where I start bleeding (this is how it affected my mother). It is bizarre because I really didn't know my 'problems' were that bad and thought I'd been under more stress before (I worked as an assistant manager in an off license just off Brighton beach for 3 years, serving drunk people and chasing homeless shop lifters). I think the problem might be that these issues are all completely outside my control so I just have to buckle down and wait for everyone else to sort their own shit out so that it stops affecting me. Anyways that was way too much of a rant that was not even remotely related to video games. It feels inappropriate to be talking of these things on the Interweb. Lost Planet 2 is awesome...

Instead of creating a separate thread for each of these, I thought I would mention 4 games I have playing the shit out of in the last three weeks. Panzer General: Allied Assault - The game is a mix between turn based strategy on a board combined with a card game similar to Magic the gathering but with Tanks! The game is really stat heavy with each unit reacting differently depending on who they are up against, how much health they each have, what combat and action cards are played, the terrain each unit is on and what support is in range. The non-combatant cards are a really good mix and can be used as sacrifice to save an ailing unit in combat. I can't really do this game enough justice in a short post I will say that the screenshots made it look kind of rubbish but aside from the cheating AI (which every TB game seems to suffer from) this game is a must for fans of the genre. Afterburner Climax - This game is pure gold, brain-numbingly fast paced and all out pure arcade experience. The game adds legs to the experience by unlocking stat bonuses like wider aim reticule and extra continues. There loads of clean blue skies and the option to use the original Afterburner soundtrack is so in the spirit of SEGA the only thing I missed was the cabinet that moved. Earthworm Jim HD - Gameloft did some really good work in HDing this game. It is essentially the same game from the Megadrive with the extra levels but now all of the sprites look like the orignal cover art. It is still as tough as I remember it. Neo Geo Battle Colliseum This was originally out on the PS2 and I never got to play it. It is a love song to SNK games with characters from Metal Slug, World Heroes, Last Blade, Fatal Fury, King of Fighters and Samurai Showdown mashed up into a pretty interesting fighting game. Although no way near as polished as some fo their other games this has a level of nostalgia that the SNK fan in me really appreciates (Marco's super is the Metal Slug tank, characters that only appeared on the Pocket Colour versions of games appear here etc). If you are a 'Marvel vs' fan this is well worth checking out. On top of that, all of these games have bucked the trend of pricing themselves at 1200 MSP. I highly recommend supporting this in itself. Soooo... Anyone else played them? Got any recommends of some of the more obscure XBLA titles?

You just added me as a friend. Good luck fighting for first on Trials (earlier levels only mind)

It might do, as it seems to be part of Ubisoft's reinvention of known franchises (they made a DS Might and Magic game that bares no resemblance to the original). If you get a chance, try out the demo as the tutorial gives a pretty good idea of what to expect. Really tempted by the Snoopy game as a friend of mine is raving about it. I didn't pay much attention until he used the words 'Crimson' and 'Skies' in close conjunction.

Got that, I should really sink some hours into it. The visual style is so different from other games and the pugilism is ace (I played the tutorial and uppercutted a birdman). I think it has Xbox LIVE Co-Op, really should check it out.

Hello, my local friends have abandoned me in terms of playing on Xbox LIVE. Have been playing Lost Planet 2, a little borderlands and a lot of XBLA titles. Twmacb is my gamertag.

Hey Groucho, I PM'd you about Greed Corps but I guess you ignored/didn't notice. I loved that game and have been encouraging others to play, if you fancy a couple of rounds at some point let me know.

Not what, who. I was really drunk and mucking about with a (ex)girlfriend of mine and I was taking the piss a bit too much (and tickling her) so she sort of, playfully bit me. I retorted that I was so drunk that I couldn't feel a thing, so then she really bit me. The gaming wasn't as much as a problem as typing one handed for a week because my fingers wouldn't do what they were supposed to. Next time, I'll date someone with dentures.

A combination of Super Streetfighter 2 and Speedball 2 resulted in me being unable to thumb a D-Pad properly for about 4 weeks it was nasty when the blister popped. I err, also got bitten really badly in the arm about 2 years ago which resulted in the fingers and thumb on my left hand not working properly for about a month, with me getting weird spasms for a few months after. Epilepsy is brutal to witness, my cousin suffers from it. Dislocating your arms as a result... Ouch.

I've been warned of this water temple, apparently it is notoriously difficult. Incidentally my attempts to get ahold of StarSiege is a story in itself. It is not available on any of the digital download sites and is not considered 'vapourware'. In the end the guy who recommended it for me managed to track down a decently priced copy on amazon and is shipping it to me. To get it to work properly on modern windows there are a bunch of downloads that are available on its fansite but I will have to see if I can get it to work on windows 7, it may be all for nought.

Right I have now finished the following: Fatal Inertia Ico Yakuza Half Life 2 Ion Assault Crysis (turned out to be Warhead rather than the original) I am starting Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the N64 next and a bit worried how that one is going to hold up.

Arrrgh, I need to get back to playing this game.

Okay I have been watching 'The Indepedint Charles show', which is by Rab from Consolevania/videogaiden and he recommended 'Along came a Spider'. I agree wholeheartedly with this recommendation the game is awesome. You play as a spider catching flies in an abstract world of outlines, the platforming is extremely fluid and involves switching between grappling onto certain points and using gravity to swing to other ledges and crawl up them. The music is fantastic and reminds me of early Massive Attack/Lemon Jelly. The gameplay is so intuitive that it becomes second nature immediately. I have also recently checked out 'You will die' which is a simple shooter where you fight one boss that increases in size every round, it reminds of an old PC game a friend showed me, the title is not wrong you will die.

Has anyone realised that this is classic From Software? They like taking the piss no matter what. Ninja Blade, Metal Wolf Chaos, Enchanted Arms, even Demon's Souls. From Software have been going out of their way to try and make you laugh at conventions while doing a really good job of aping the styles that came before. I love it.

How do you embed? I am sort of proud that I contributed to that video, as I was the guy that told them where they could buy the Saturn from. My personal favourite was the Shadow of the Colossus bit, they did a great job of editing. Also if no one has already (I couldn't find it previously), the New Old Spice adverts are gold: Seriously makes me want to use Old Spice

Pretty sure that some PS3/X360 games don't run without the latest firmware and when booted, install it from the disc. This happened to a friend who never updated to the NXE, it eventually came on a game disc that was incompatible with the older firmware. Sure, the user is prompted before the install but that is a much heftier choice.

A friend of mine put this video together: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlDtdGTm3pE&feature=related