Not me. Don't really get what's so good about Halo to be honest. Not that it isn't good, just that I think people are a tad over enthusiastic about it. I Grand Theft Auto Advance today only to find there's no fucking map in the box. Do we not get one or summit?

yeah, i bought that the other day. It's pretty good if you like the x-men. a kind of cross between 'baldurs gate: dark alliance' and 'freedom force' if you've played either.
some characters are a lot more fun than others (using Storm to throw everyone around the room with tornadoes is great) and it can get a little repetetive but all in all a decent buy. and it's 4 player

I've been playing Tony Hawks: Underground on my PS2, which is amazing, and the Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons on my GBC. Zelda games are officially the best ever.

Seen the trailer for the new game (not four swords)

I am drueling just at the thought of it.

Compleating Ocarina of time was completeing part of my life.

http://www.spaced-out.org.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=7143

Mmm, 2D

I've always sided for Soul Calibur. Although they both have their plusses, after playing Soul Calibur, Tekken just feels too slow.



I will not be working on the 11th. However my housemate who owns the Xbox has refused to buy it till the 12th because he IS working on the 11th. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I agree, Halo is good there is no denying that, but I'm sorry it is not THAT good. It hasn't reshaped FPS in the way some people go on about. I was watching an interview with some of the team involved in making Halo and they were bragging about this and that and claiming things like 'for the first time you can drive vehicles in a FPS game' ??? er... pretty sure that was possible before Halo, for one, Red Faction springs to mind.

Yes, all of that rubbish about it revolutionising FPS games is rubbish (although I don't know about the techy stuff) but it is one of the most rounded and polished games I've ever played. It has a great storyline, excellent gameplay and enemy AI, good soundtrack, interesting characters and backstory, good combination of stealth and all out action. If you can name me another game which marries so many GOOD elements together then please do so. And I don't personally think original half-life compares. It may have been the Halo of its day (or maybe halo is the half-life of its day) but side by side halo is MUCH better.

Sorry, I love Halo too much and I'm very excited. I don't mean to offend anyone who dislikes Halo, but it is better than any other game ever created

I have yet to see this compliment levelled at any game that deserves it.

It might turn out to be the case for San Andreas (that it deserves the compliment, I mean) - it certainly is so far.

As for Halo, who cares if it's been over hyped - it's hard to deny that it looks and sounds great, feels 'right' and is great fun to play. Surely that's all that matters?

another game which marries great gameplay elements, AI, soundtrack, story etc.. is Metal Gear Solid/2, not to everyones taste but a superbly crafted game, admittedly some stupidly long cut scenes but a fab game all the same.
* gets ready for barrage of anti MGS comments *

I'm not sure you can really compare Halo to the original Half Life because of the fact Half Life was released quite a while before Halo, and comparing various aspects simply isn't fair because game technology moves on and new games take advantage of that. You really do have to look at how the so called benchmark games change things, it is a true compliment to Half Life that even several years down the line new FPS titles are STILL being compared to it and Valve/Sierra are probably sitting there laughing saying 'yeah such and such is better but it took them five or six years to get there' and now you'll have Half Life 2 which really is going to piss over that whole genre again.

If you do really love Halo, then honestly good for you, play and enjoy.

Really? You are very unlucky not to have played a good game then , or perhaps they just don't appeal to your particular tastes

As for Metal Gear Solid, I confess I did love the original on the Playstation, but when i played the MGS2 on the Xbox I got bored really quickly and gave up. And as for people still comparing new games to half life, iits because there hasn't been a game which has caused quite the same stir, except for halo, in the FPS market since Half-Life. There have been better games, just not that much better.

Also, as someone else said, I don't want this to turn into an xbox Vs. PS bashing or anything. Halo just suits the way I want to play a game perfectly and just because something is hyped, doesn't mean it HAS to dissapoint (although Doom 3 definately backs that argument up!!!)

I've played plenty of good games just none with a remotely decent story. Games don't need good stories to be successful but games which rely on their story to be good have always been unsuccessful.
Agreed that San Andreas is shaping up okay so far but only as a very derivative Singleton/Dickerson knock off, which is part of the problem of in game storylines.

I agree, games don't NEED a good storyline to be succesful, and games that rely SOLELY on storyline obviously have inherant weaknesses, but that doesn't mean there aren't any games that deserve the compliment to be levelled at them - thats a far more confusing sentance to write than I would have expected...

I would say Shenmue is a good example, if a little longwinded. I AM still waiting for the conclusion mr Suzuki!

I think Starcraft managed it on both the storyline and gameplay fronts. A very, very well done story (including backstory in the manual) and whilst not perhaps the most sophisticated RTS game the whole three sided thing was cleverly done. Plus it did its own multiplayer pretty early, and pretty well, which helped longevity. One of very few games I've actually ended up dreaming about.

Video game in derivative storyline shocker!


It's all relative, really. I don't expect (or necessarily want) an in-depth storyline - if the game's good, and fun to play, who cares if the backstory's hack or even non existent? I guarantee that Manic Miner - The Novel would be pretty crap.

Nor do I, but as a writer I find it really frustrating to hear people say 'the storyline was great' when referring to something which, had it been a film, would have made me demand my money back and burn the cinema to the ground. Max Payne is probably the best example of this. Every time the game skipped into 'comic' mode I found myself choking back vomit only to then read reviews praising the game for it's 'gripping' story.

No I don't think that because something is hyped it HAS to dissapoint(although I also agree that Doom 3 backs that arguement up) and I don't think that Halo is a dissapointment, it's just that to me a little too much has been made of it, but hey that's just me.

This week I 'ave mainly been playing...

Rome:Total War and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic on my PC, and on my mates PS2, Star Wars Battlefront.

Next on the agenda is X-Men Legends, yum!

I'm very puzzled. I really must be missing something with Halo, because I thought it was absolutely dreadful. I've been playing it recently, and to begin with, I thought "it's a reasonably good game but it's nothing worth shouting about". Now, each time I play it, it gets worse.

The biggest flaw of the game has to be the level design. While the outdoor areas are reasonably fun, there's not enough of them, and the indoor areas are absolutely horrendous. They've quite literally just copied and pasted the same rooms and used them over and over again. I got to a level called the "Library" or something, and it has to be the worst level I've ever seen in a game. It's so utterly boring. They've pretty much modelled one floor of the place, and then just repeated it loads of times. So many times in the game I've gotten lost or confused because I've gone into a room and thought "haven't I just been in here?" to realise that the room is literally identical to one i'd just left. They don't even make much of an attempt to disguise it, by moving details around a bit.

As for the enemies... The covenant are supposed to be a "fearsome" race, yet most of them do nothing but running around with their arms in the air shrieking in comedy voices. How are you supposed to take them seriously? The fact that everything alien was all stupid bright colours didn't help either.

I really can't think of any good reason to recommend Halo to anyone. In its day, the vehicles were quite good, but it's so rare to actually find one that it's not something to get excited about.

I thought Doom 3 was repetitive, but Halo is so much more so...

This week I have returned to the miond blowing extravaganza which was...Final Fantasy Seven. I realise that this was a game where you either loved it or hated it. Personally for me it is a game of joy and love and fluffy things

I bought Full Spectrum Warrior today and although I've only done the training and Level 1 it seems to be shaping up quite well. I had to stop playing to go to work. Don't you hate it when the real world intrudes on the virtual?

But.. the random battles.. AAAAAGHH. I must admit though, VII is the one that makes you care most about the characters.

At the moment im addicted to Raven Shield..

And like most cant wait for Halo 2 and Half-Life 2..also im a big Ghost recon Fan so GR2 looks awsom and will be on my Crimbo list!

ShArK

San Andreas, Halo 2, Half-Life 2, and Metroid Prime 2. You'd think all those sequals would be a bad thing...
I have to say I'm looking forward to Halo 2. Looking forward is an understatement, I've been obssessing over it. At the best of times I'm a rabid Halo fanboy, I'd be happy if they just released Halo with new levels and xbox live support. But I'm also really looking forward to Half-Life 2. I've already paid for the silver package on steam...who needs a box anyway... Still Counter-Strike: Source is pretty cool but I'm not really into it, everyone else is too good and I'm quite bad. I just hope my PC doesn't melt under the strain of HL2 if it can even run it at all.

On top of San Andreas I've been playing a bit of Pandora Tomorrow's multiplayer. I have a love/hate thing going on with Splinter Cell single player, I geep wanting it to be more Metal Gear Solid, but the multiplayer is fantastic, providing you play with nice friendly people who talk. Luckily a lot of my friends have Live so there's always someone you know you can play with.

I guess I have that to look forward to

Also, I noticed a few treats in Edge t'other day. ICO 2 - i haven't played ico and hadn't heard of it before, as I don't own a PS2 - looks quite incredible. Pity its PS2 only.

And Gran Tourismo 4 too!

There are a couple of levels on Return of the King PS2 where you can take out the day's frustrations on an endless supply of Orcs. Lara in Angel of Darkness is winding me so I keep turning it off and I've got Final Fantasy Tactics in the Gameboy right now. My friend has lent me Resident Evil but I'm too scared to put it on

Ico 2 looks absolutely fabulous doesn't it, and what a top concept for a game. I must say the first Ico game is defo in my top five games for the PS2, it's probably worth getting the console just to play that!!

if you can find it. I have never once seen a copy.

There are some copies on Amazon (and eBay) but look at the price! I assume it's been deleted then - glad I got a copy at the time (with the art cards).

Fucking hell how much !!

I also got the version with the art cards, and a beautifuly presented game it was too.

goodness, it is expensive!

I absolutely love this game, but I know exactly what yo mean. Every time I play it I end up walking around really paranoid about zombie attacks for the next three day.
If you think this is scary though you should try playing the hospital scen in silent hill...at night

I've been playing Super Mario 3 and also Super Mario The Lost Levels.

My housemate just also bought a copy of Super Mario World for the Snes from eBay today. Haven't played that game in years and I'm looking forward to it

Is it me or is the Snes still one of the best consoles around?? So many good playable games on there.

Its you, the Dreamcast is the best ever!

It's gameboy and you know it is.

If only I could get the SNES emulator working on my Dreamcast this argument would be unnecessary.

My SNES emulator does work on my dreamcast and so does the NES emulator, and the N64 emulator... Mario 64 on the dreamcast is a strange irony when Sonic is now languishing on the Gamecube and GBA.

I only really play Rez and Soul Calibur on it now though

I won an Xbox recently, and I bought Fable for it, which I am enjoying quite a lot. It's the newest RPG from Peter Molyneux's Lionhead Studios (who bought us Black & White, a game famous for letting you have a poo-flinging monkey). It's quite similar to Black & White in the way that you can be good or evil and what you do in the world dictates how people view you (e.g as their saviour or as someone to fear), and the quests are interesting and can be challenging but not frustratingly so (apart from one timed one but I've got past that now, finally.) My only gripe is that I wish it were a little less linear. You can only unlock certain side quests once you've done some required ones, which is understandable but I wish there was more to do.

Still, I'd give it 8/10, as it's very enjoyable if you like this sort of thing.

Also, I agree with whoever says the Dreamcast was the best console ever. I wubs my DC!

Friday... I can't wait.

prairiedawn, as I understand it, Fable is one of those rare games that is actually better second time around. So I'm told by folks who know things. I don't have an X-Box myself see, but I'm thinking about picking one up when Oddworld: Stranger comes out.

So's you can fire critters at things, hehe, that looks mighty interesting.

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned that HALO 2 came out TODAY, and so far looks to be pretty dam good! Unfortunately, I have work until 7 in the morning, NOOOOOO Halo 2 is at home, and I'm not!!!! Mind you I'm playing Tron 2.0 at the moment anyway, so who cares.

btw/ tron 2.0 is very good in my opinion.

Azkaban on my son's gameboy (when he's asleep) whilst I'm waiting for santa to bring him Star Wars Battlefronts. Strangely enough, the letter's been sent to santa already!

JJM

The Dreamcast is a great console too, but the Snes you can always go back to, to play the classics, unless your using an emulator, which I've been doing today to play Super Mario World, cause we still haven't got our proper copy for the Snes through the post yet.

Makes me want to pick up my old Dreamcast from the cafe (where it is regularly engaged in 4 player Virtua Tennis) and take it home so I can enjoy the delights of Rez plugged into big speakers...

Advance Wars for the GBA is something i've been replaying again (can't wait for the nintendo DS version) - that and Puyo Puyo.

And obviously there is Dawn of War for the PC, for which a mod toolkit was released today.

Yes? To what extent - will the table top gamers be able to add missing races or does it not go that far?

Has anyone been playing GTA San Andreas? After hearing my work collegues talk about it obsessively I couldn't resist to go out last Friday and buy a new PS2 and the game........now I'm obsessed!! I spent nearly 8 hours gaming on Saturday!

Has anyone read a review or even played Getaway 2 yet?

I go here for reviews.
There is currently only one review for Black Monday but there will be others: here.

Right now i'm playing....bounce on my phone

I've started playing Super Mario World on the Snes again. I nearly finished it all with all exits in a couple of hours yesterday cause I was bored.

But I have a real urge to start playing Tekken 2 again, but I need to get hold of a copy first. Off to eBay I go then.

I'm getting a dreamcast with Shenmue 1 & 2 at christmas, can't wait shenmue 1 was one of the best games i've ever played.