Stevie Grant’s “What we’ve been playing”: Week of 24/10/2010

This is gaming, I guess.

Yo what’s up? Welcome to ‘Stevie Grant’s What We’ve Been Playing‘ the ONLY place on the internet where you can find out about what the Sega Addicts writers have been playing. Amazing isn’t it? Well you know what else is amazing? A Muppets Christmas Carol. Yeah. Movie rules. In fact you should all listen to the songs from the movie while you read this article. It’ll give this section a little class, and muppet fun, at least.

So what are you waiting for? Cue up your Muppets Christmas Carol soundtrack and hit the jump! Do it now you fool!

Stevie Grant- Writer of Top 10 Worst and Reviews of Games I Haven’t Played:
I played Super Meat Boy. If you’ve read my review then you know what I think. What are you waiting for? Buy it now! Other then that I played some Sonic 4.. those special stages are horrendous and I now retroactively hate the game. Let’s hope ep 2 is better. Oh! Also I’m playing the first Professor Layton game because I do long bus journeys everyday now and I wanted something story based and substantial to play. It’s good although the puzzles make me feel like an idiot.

Brett Hatfield- Community Manager and writer of Megadriving:

A metric fuckton of Resonance of Fate. The more I play it, the more I fall for it. Just a really really well made game. Played a bit more Soul Calibur IV as well (with one of the best finishes to a fight me and my friend have ever had), and FINALLY got back into my simracing on NASCAR 2003.

Alex Barbatsis- Writer of Retro Reviews and Freaky Fridays:
Mario galaxy 2 still (and still love it!) Jet grind radio, and fantasy university. All are very fun, though I wish fantasy university was a game game and not a facebook game, but you get love where you can get it, right? Should I be excited for sonic colors? Maybe, but I’m not sold on wisps, and I’ve played it! Fingers crossed its ok.

Alexander Sargeant- Writer of Retro Reviews:
Vanquish, also for review, which I just this moment finished my first play through of. I started thinking of Zone of the Enders being analogous to it and it turned out to be a much truer statement than I first realised. This means that the inevitable ‘Vanquish: The 2nd Slider’ will be incredible. This time around, it was great.. but not quite essential. About to start GOD HARD now, which is hopefully as horrible as it sounds. That aside, Fallout New Vegas which is fantastic fun, shockingly because it was developed by Obsidian, who made the conceptually-sound-but-technically-horrible Alpha Protocol. Certainly fixes the issues I had with Fallout 3.

Also SUPER CRATE BOX (Google it!) as it hybridises Bubble Bobble and arena shooters to make something not quite like either. It’s quite good.

Matthew Jay- Writer of 10 Things That Aren’t Sonic and Radvertisements:
Redder on adult swim games. It’s a flash adventure game with a sort of Metroidvania map system and some puzzle-y elements. Really interesting timesink. Also I bought Super Scribblenauts and Goozex’d it like right away. Also SNK vs Capcom on the Neo Geo Pocket Color, Sonic on the Game Gear and MarioLand on the GameBoy. Lotta handhelds.

Josh Newey- Writer of With Great Power Comes Great Games and Underappreciated Gems:
I’ve been playing a ton of Vanquish for review. Despite its frenetic, messy gameplay, it has been a blast so far. I also still find myself jumping into Sonic 4 again and again to snatch up the miscellaneous achievements like finishing the first stage in under a minute and getting all the rings in the first bonus stage. I am honestly stunned that it has gotten as much backlash as it has. Despite its flaws, I am very satisfied with the result. People can keep on bitching. I’ll just keep on playing.

Pat Reddick- Community Manager and writer of Forum News and Not-so Classics:
I just picked up, or rather loaded down, Super Meat Boy and I can’t wait to begin that. I also picked up the second Ace Attorney game, though that’s not Sega related at all, so forget about it. Bayonetta continues to sit on my shelf, yelling at me to finish it. There’s something about that game that makes me hate to think about playing it, but then love the hell out of it when I do play it. Probably the sexuality. Speaking of gorgeous things, I played the Sonic HD remix thing a little bit. I really enjoyed it as a game, but more than occasionally the badniks blended in to the visual cacophony of delicious, making for some frustrating deaths. Stylistically it’s gorgeous though. That’s another segue: I also played Batman: Revenge of the Joker for my Not-So Classic Games feature. It looks beautiful, sounds great, but plays like shit. Now go read that!

Kris Knigge- Reviewer and Podcast Co-host:
I’ve been playing a lot of not-very-good games recently. It’s most unfortunate that I have to ignore games like Vanquish and Lords of Shadow to play things like Final Fantasy XIV and Sengoku Basara lately…

Tom Kyzivat- Artist and Podcast Co-host:
I played Sonic Jam on the Saturn because I’m a loser and can’t afford the new fancy video game machines. I rocked Sonic 3 mostly–and I kind of forgot how much of a pain in the ass some of those levels are (I’m looking at you, Hydrocity…). A fun game, but as far as I’m concerned, still not as good as 2.

Alex Riggen- Editor in Chief and Podcast Host:
I’ve been playing Vanquish all week. I loved the demo and the full game has exceeded my expectations. There are some truly awe-inspiring moments in terms of both the setting and architecture but also some of the massive boss fights. The game never lets up and it’s pretty much non-stop crazy action which makes me feel the 4-6 hour campaign is perfectly suited to the game. If the game were any longer I feel it would start to drag on. MadWorld also had a short campaign and it too felt like it didn’t need to be any longer.

And that was that. I’m so glad Scrooge realised the errors of his way’s and now Kermit’s nephew Robin doesn’t have to die for some reason. So happy. Oh and the games we were playing were quite good too. Whatever, this article wasn’t as good as A Muppets Christmas Carol, go figure. Go watch that movie now. It doesn’t matter that Halloween’s coming up sooner.

Speaking of that, remember to tell me what you’ve been playing in the comments and I’ll see you next week for a very spooOOOOOOOOOooOOOOOoOoOooOOOOOky edition of this column.