I played this week-end "Saint Seiya - Zodiac Knights - The Sanctuary" on PS2... I'm not really a fan of "fist-fight games", but this games comes from a manga movie release 10/15 years ago, and I was a fan of this manga movie series... so...

Animation / video sequences are really cool: it's like in the manga movie. As well, the special effects like lights halos, etc.. are very well made
Commands are a little bit complicated and annoying sometimes (it's not like tekken), i.e. you need to learn special combo in order to have efficient damages on your ennemy... Maybe it's not so easy as I would like... or maybe I'm too old for this game ... ;)... As well, keeping in guard without attacking your ennemy is not helpfull, and after more or less 5 attacks of your ennemy: hits, and you loose health... You really have to attack to survive..
There are 3 modes: a "one vs one" as usual, the "12 house of zodiacs" like in the movie (yo have to defeat the 12 gold zodiac knights in their respective house, so if you missed an episode of the movie, it's pretty cool... ), and a third one (I don't remember the exact name..) where you are the pope (the bad guy of the movie) and you try to kill the heroes while they are progressing trhought houses of zodiac... So you are allowed to choose between the good and the evil...
The most crappy thing are the sub-titles ingame, and you are not allowed to remove them (or I still don't find where and how to remove them..)
Globally, it was fun, and I fall back in my late youth... 

Cool game, well done and I really enjoyed it. Maybe on the short side, only took me 12-15 hours but it was a fun 12-15 hours. Gameplay was pretty standard but the atmosphere and style was distinctive and a very cool - a bit OTT but it did what it did well.

Then again, I was enjoying it on it's own merits, I hadn't played MP1 so I didn't have any preconceptions....and I've heard unbiased views are so passe these days.... 

I enjoyed MP2 a hell of a lot more than the first game. I thought the art was generally better, the gameplay much more forgiving, the dream sequences done better with regards to gameplay (although perhaps they had less impact). As a result, I actually bothered to play it on all skill modes until I got the slightly altered ending.

It's a fairly short game, but I find most games a bit too long these days, so that was a refreshing change.

As for Max, I didn't really think he was particularly likeable or dislikable, and I didn't care much since all he was there for was to allow me to run around shooting things. 

As for Max, I didn't really think he was particularly likeable or dislikable, and I didn't care much since all he was there for was to allow me to run around shooting things.

Max is too emotional and navel gazing for my taste but this had no effect on how I enjoyed the game play. The loony asylum haunted house set up was a particularly inspired moment of game design IMO. As was the gangster in the costum with the giant feet you have to save from a mob hit. 

although the general idea was cool and execution was great, the mission where you have to save that guy was massively frustrating. It was the only point I remember constantly hitting quick save/load.

One nice touch is that when you go through his flat you can smash his Captain Baseball Bat Boy stuff up and he nearly starts to cry :) 

It was definitely an interesting gameplay scene. However, what bothered me about it is that in the previous game Max wasn't about saving the bad guys for any reason; he was about killing the scum and then figuring out what to do after they were all dead. It just didn't fit with the established character. 

he was in love, and not thinking clearly



blame the woman ;) 

Ok so I've played quite a bit of this game now, so I'm gonna share my thoughts on it.

Overall I enjoy it, but there are things that bring it down from being great.

Let me elaborate, in a game such as this where you are throwing down your gameplay to the mercy of the people playing it, quality can swing from good to bad in a matter of seconds, and this is the main problem with Battlefield 2. 80% of the people playing it are just fucking stupid.

Harsh but fair, how many times have I seen a player get into a blackhawk, which has ample room for a FULL SQUAD of soldiers to ride in (which just happen to be approaching to get in) and the idiot just takes off by himself and flies into the nearest friendly tank. You would think that this happens maybe once or twice a game, but I see this happen every 30 seconds at least. And if you are one of those squad members rushing to the transport you tend to get FUCKING PISSED OFF and shoot the thing as it flies off. And its not just limited to aircraft, it happens with everything.

Now I have had the luxury of playing on a server where most of the players have been very sensible, and the game was a joy to play from start of the match to the very end. I geuss what I'm trying to say is that its a arse to find a decent server to play on, which brings me nicely to my 2nd point...

The games server browser didnt work on release.... Well it KIND OF did, but its was fucking useless. How EA could green light a ONLINE SHOOTER with a broken server browser is beyond me, but I geuss I half expected it being EA after all. Luckily this has been fixed in a patch.

The game is also quite the resource hog, I have to run everything on medium settings or it lags, chops, stops and burps more than czg after a double helping of whale meat.

If you can find that golden server, then the game is great, but its a long and dark road to this great place. A shame... 

Any good? I'm gonna try it once I've got the time. 

I've been playing the hell out of this. Most of what DaZ said is true, public servers are a bit of a gamble. I've found that if you've got nice phat bandwidth as I do, the pubbie servers can be pretty fun if there are 40 or more people on it and you can find one with a playable ping. This is because with the greaters numbers theres a better chance of at least one or two squads on each side actually playing with some teamwork that you can get in on. And if thats not your thing, plenty of fragbait to vent your frustration :) But for the most part I play on private servers so pubbie faggotry is a relative non-issue.

Oh, and if you're in it for teamwork, definitely stay away from public ranked servers. Most of those folks just care about increasing their rankings, above all.

Game has some issues though, the UI, while useable since the latest patch, is still slow and poorly designed. It also consumes a load of bandwidth (disconnecting my AIM session when connecting to a server *every* time, forcing an alt-tab which is way annoying) and resources in general.

I plan on checking out the map editor IF EA RELEASES IT SOMETIME THIS CENTURY. 64 player all-city map? Oh yes, please. 

Make an id base map for it and maybe I'll buy the game. 

if you make the hi-res textures and shaders :) 

I won't repeat what has already so much, but just affirm their comments. No other game can be so supremely entertaining, and outright frustrating at the same time. When you play BF2 as intended, with an intellegent, well balanced squad, you will have an experience unlike any other currently available on pc. Teamplay like this hasn't been excuted so well in a long time.

However, within minutes of this gaming high, it's brought to a crushing low by several key design issues. First up, auto teamswitching. If you are enjoying yourself in a good squad, be prepared to be switched at a moments notice. This is so annoying, particularly when you and you're squad have gotten in a good grove.

Next, terrible terrible terrible UI. Like Notor said before, it's usable now, but that isn't saying much. Connecting to the Auth Server takes up to and over a minute, and then you're brought into one of the worst server browsing GUIs of all time. Slow, nearly unresponsive, this is just unthinkable to have considered 'good enough'.

Finally, and this maybe just my rig, but loading times are rediculously long. Granted it's loading a lot of content, but they should have been able to shave some time somewhere. I guess it wouldn't be half as bad if I didn't spend so much time just getting to a server. After the first load, things get better I'll admit.

But for all my complaining, it's worth it once you get into the squad gameplay it was designed for. Nothing feels as rewarding as playing with a great squad and accomplishing the various goals assigned to you. 

Of all of you that have both a PSP and a DS, which do you prefer?

I have to say that although the DS is full of really cool game ideas, most of these seem to last me about an hour before I get bored of them. My PSP games have had a lot more playtime and I don't get bored of them on a 2-3 hour train ride.

The PSP also has all the cool media options, and if you have an original Japanese or US model, it is very easy to run emulators on it. Apparently it is very difficult to do this on the DS.

Glad the DS is outselling the PSP though. I really don't want another market to be saturated by the same games we have on consoles (no NFS extreme hardcore underground illegal edition or WWF RAW kickass ultra violent edition.) 

But the DS interests me more than PSP, at least currently. So far, the PSP is full of mediocre, uninspired games like Madden and other boring pieces of donkey spittle. The DS has some REALLY cool games (or at least interesting) and as a game machine sports some awesome hardware ideas. The PSP is neat, yes, but it's not really a gaming machine as much as a multimedia machine.

Personally, I would go with DS over PSP because I think whenever the next hand-held Zelda game comes out it'll r0x0r your mom's b0x0rz. But my opinion is invalid and pointless because
1.) I own neither system.
2.) I am Zwiffle, and no one respects me. 

The DS is more interesting on paper, but so far, all the games I have bought, aside from warioware, have been a dissapointment. Even warioware was dissapointing after it was completed - I did not have any urge to go back for more.

Electroplankton was the last DS game I bought and was a complete waste of money. For a fiver it would be worth it though.

There are still a few interesting PSP games, and even though there is a drought of really exciting new stuff, there are a handful of titles that are high quality and lots of fun, despite their lack of originality. 

That was mentioend in the GA thread is really good, some of the best 2d platform action I've experienced actually with great boss fights that really gets the arenaline going.

Exceptionally good for freeware! 

Anyone tried this? I'm downloading it now.... their site's download doesn't seem to connect and they provide no mirrors, but check Filefront or Fileplanet.

http://www.knightonlineworld.com 

i got the Lego Star Wars game thingy
very fun game so far, dunno if I would spend money on it tho :) 

I am a total GW whore now. Nuff said. 

Ok, I've been on a bit of a console-playing binge for the last couple of months, and I've got an arseload of games I've been meaning to do reviews of, but I'll start with God of War for the PS2 because it's fresh in my memory atm.

Summary: Ridiculously OTT Greek mythology-themed 3rd person hack-and-slash fest, with platforming and puzzle-solving elements.

Review: On the whole, this is an arse-roastingly good game, with probably the best graphics I've seen on the PS2 so far, and probably the most fun and visually impressive combat i've seen in the hack'n'slash genre as you become a whirlwind of flaming death, spinning your ridiculous fiery twin swords-on-elastic-chains about in a seemingly endless variety of ways, all akin to watching a catherine wheel on an acid trip. It's got awesome music too. I'd say the technical polish of the game is pretty much flawless.

You can level up your weapons and magic, and acquire new moves and combos as you accumulate red shit that comes out of monsters as you kill them. After twatting a monster for a bit, you can then do a sort of 'finishing move' which involves some nifty button-mashing, and if you get the combination right, it yields extra health and magic orbs. Very cool.

Some of the level designs are truly awe-inspiring. About one third of the game takes place inside a single vast temple of insanity; when you get a chance to go outside the tower and look down, you see that the temple is actually being carried across the desert on the back of a colossal crawling giant.

The platforming and puzzle-solving aspects are for the most part extremely well done, imaginative and balanced. The checkpoint/autosave points are well positioned, and you (generally) never find yourself having to spend more than a minute or two catching up if you get killed.

I say 'for the most part', because the game seems to lose the plot a bit on the penultimate level. This is the only really shitty bit I've come across so far. Maybe some hobo broke into the level designer's house and stabbed his pet dog or something, because whoever made this map was in a really, really shitty mood. Ok, imagine having to vertically navigate the most drawn-out, frustrating, impossible multiple spinning blade trap, which would take you about 10 minutes to traverse if you did it perfectly the first time without ever fucking up once, but then consider that there are approximately 12,527 unique opportunities to fuck it up along the way, and that when you do fuck up, you get kicked all the way back to the beginning. Yeah. I'm probably fine with calling it a day here to be honest, because I understand I'm basically at the end of the game, and the end boss will probably be more of the same bollocks, but even so >:{

So, yeah, in conclusion, the first 95% of the game rocks hard, but the QA guys kind of dropped the ball on the last bit - but it was fun while it lasted! 

Yeah, Kinn, I saw a guy playing that at Red Storm this summer. It looked pretty cool, and I can attest to the cool graphics.

I wouldn't be too harsh on the QA guys, though; they can't actually change the game. 

...quicksaving =) 

I wouldn't be too harsh on the QA guys, though; they can't actually change the game.

True dat :{ 

sounds to be some nice and inspired shit at least on the plot/art department...