Another late installment of this section this week. Yeah, that’s right it’s time to go backwards in time and see what some of us writers were doing in our spare time. And by doing I mean ‘a small part of what we were doing I.E. playing games.’ But you get the idea. Hit the jump to read it, or continue along with your meaningless existence elsewhere.
Stevie Grant- Writer of Top 10 Worst and Boss Attack:
Err. I’ve been busy lately. Some tiny amount of Super Meat Boy. Some Earthworm Jim. Nothing substantial. Guess I’m boring now.
Alexander Sargeant- Writer of Retro Reviews:
The demo for CAAATTHHEERRRINNNE… which is brilliant. Some genuinely frightening puzzle action mixed in with some gorgeous looking adventure gameness (from the era where adventure meant ’emphasis on story’, rather than ‘CLIMBING ON STUFF).Dead Space 2: Dead Spaces, which is obscenely pretty and good, but you probably already know that.
Mindjack, which is bad, but I also like it. A lot of what it tries to accomplish falls pretty much on its ass, but the totality of its ideas are actually pretty solid. The drop-in drop-out gameplay is entirely seemless, you can tailor the game to suit your needs (Do you want to be hacked by other players? How many do you want let in? Should they all be private?), What I really like is that people seem to think it’s an impossible game, in that human antagonists will simply always win out due to their overwhelming odds and the stupid checkpointing (which is definitely dumb), but that’s really only if you’re playing to win.
I had numerous accounts in one game of being able to obliterate the Main Character, but I left him teetering on the edge fighting back with all he had. You might say I ‘let him win’, but for me it was a role playing/dungeon master sort of deal. If you’re in it to grief, you can absolutely do that (you will of course probably get kicked by the host), but if you happen to give it a rent- as it’s not worth the full price by any stretch -then I definitely encourage you to try and enjoy it in an untraditional way. Especially as you actually get rewarded more experience if you’re hammering the enemy down lots and lots rather than actually killing them outright,
Nothing Sega, but Infinite Space looked at me desperately today, and I may have to try taking that to task in the not too distant future.
Pat Reddick- Community Manager/ Writer of Forum News and Not-so Classics:
RPG’s will be the death of me. I just finished Mass Effect and I’m still working away on Dragon Quest 9. The former was an incredible game that I can’t wait to play more of. The latter is getting progressively less enjoyable. I think now I’m going to play Sonic Adventure. I’m still pretty upset about the whole Sonic 2006 thing, so Sonic isn’t exactly sitting too well with me right now. It’s surprising how disheartening that game actually is. And I came into that game expecting it to be awful. After that I’, trying to decide if I should play Splatterhouse, Condemned or Eternal Sonata. I guess you’ll find out next week.
Josh Newey – Writer of With Great Power Comes Great Games and Underappreciated Gems:
Continuing my playthrough of Majin, which is continuing to be lovely. I am getting tired of all the backtracking though. It’s cool to know that there’s always new areas to go back and explore whenever you’re stuck in the main meat of the game, but as a OCD-stricken gamer, it just makes for repeated journeys to old areas every time I get a new ability. There’s a teleport system, but I’ve only uncovered three stations and the map is pretty huge. Whenever I got tired of all that, I fiddled with a bit of Bionic Commando: Rearmed in anticipation of the sequel’s release. Lordy do I enjoy that game.I also played through the campaigns of Big The Cat and Amy Rose in Sonic Adventure. My desire to play as Super Sonic exemplifies my continued Sega-centric masochism.
@Pat – Maybe this is a given I would STAY AWAY from Big The Cat’s stages in Sonic Adventure, unless you just gotta play the Super Sonic stage. I forgot how painfully boring those fishing stages can be, especially when nothing bites for more than a couple seconds. In the past I may have even defended that oaf, but the frustration and agonizingly slow platforming of his stages just makes me wonder why Sega ever bothered tossing in this throwaway campaign. I rarely finished a stage in less than 15 minutes. Yeesh.
Last but definitely not least, I’m still waiting for my copy of Dead Space 2. What the hell, Amazon.
Tom Kyzivat- Artist and Podcast Co-host:
Not a lot going on with me–just trying to get all the hidden characters in Jet Set Radio Future. Mike finished Darksiders (which had a pretty cool yet unsatisfying ending) and started playing Brutal Legend, which is genius! The art direction and voice acting is brilliant! I didn’t realize it had the whole “realtime war strategy” element to it. Interesting…
Alex Riggen- Editor in Chief and Podcast Host:
Still working through The Witcher. Its a huge game but I’m finding myself enjoying the game more and more as I keep playing. Its a nice combination of Fable and The Elder Scrolls games and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they improved or changed for the upcoming sequel.I also decided to puchase Final Fantasy 9 on my PSP for some random reason. I’ve only finished two JRPGs in my entire life but I’ve this is one of the best and decided to give it a try. I’m only a few hours in but so far I’m having a lot of fun and the characters and story are great. My only gripe is the random battles but I already expected that before I started.
@Pat – Play Condemned.
Well certainly a lot of recommendations for Pat this week. And by that I mean two. But if you want to shout at him and any other writers then leave us a comment! You can even tell us what you played if you desire! Either way that’s the end for this week. Have a nice whatever you do in between reading these articles.
