Interesting. I'm gonna look into it as a future purchase.

Depending on difficulty, I did it on hard in about 10-12 hours.

I did spec ops on normal in just about 5 hours

Good lad

You should consider adding Alpha Protocol to that list.
Loving it. It's like Syphon Filter meets Bourne meets Mass Effect.

Alpha Protocol sits perfectly with BiDo and Spec Ops in that "it's nowhere near a great game but bless it for being a mental."

New Super Mario Bros. 2

Yes, Peach is kidnapped. Yes, you run from left to right, and jump on Goombas. But complaining about that would be like complaining that the latest Street Fighter features punching and kicking.

There are enough clever little touches to keep you interested in what's around the corner, and the platforming is spot on. Initially, having to press down on the d-pad to do a ground pound is a bit odd, but probably makes more sense to beginners than tapping the L button. You can also swap around the buttons, meaning I could have my preferred run-on-B-and-jump-on-A set-up that I couldn't get in 3D Land.

Yes, you've seen most of this before. But when it's this good, it's hard to care. Had me grinning from ear to ear and unwilling to put the 3DS down. If you haven't played 3D Land yet, start with that, it's probably going to keep you going for longer and definitely features the more innovative game play. But for 2D platforming refined to a golden (coin) shine, this is the place to be.

7

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have secret worlds to unlock and giant coins to find.

Because I don't finish that many games these days, I'll cross post from the thread:

Darksiders 2

And it's done.

Well, first playthrough anyway.

Overall, cracking game. And I have to say outright that the Edge 6 is overly harsh. This game is not the second coming, and is derivative in many ways, but it's also undeniably enjoyable in a very straightforward way. Pretty much everything works, and works well. There's no harsh punishment for death, and any foibles with the platforming and even the fighting can be easily forgiven in light of that. It's not challenging in the same sense as a Souls game, but heck, after hammering Dark and being stuck in Demon's, that wasn't an issue for me.

So, the Good:

- it's copped some flack for being a little past it graphically, but I think it looks fab. Great looking hub areas, and dungeons, massive spectacular views and characters, and enough variety so I wasn't, for the most part, sick of looking at it. (A couple of spots were a touch long in the tooth.)

- Possessed weapons/loot. This aspect is absolutely nailed. The weapon upgrading and hunting is awesome. Kinda wish you could also do it with the pistol you get early on.

- combat. Not amazing, and you can pretty much just mix and match between X and Y to do big combos, but it's always pretty spectacular, and you do feel pretty badass smashing people around.

- (Most of) the bosses. Not particularly challenging, but enough variety and ott action for entertainment's sake.

- The early dungeons. The puzzling early/midway through the game is spot on.

- Voice acting. Is really good, tbh. Big, silly etc. But so is the story, it's certainly not cringe inducing.

The bad:

- I had a couple of issues with the game completely freezing in specific spots. NONE of them effected being able to get anywhere or move the game forward, but yeah, not good.

- ability management. Dare I say this game could have been better with Kinect? Or something. Either way, managing all the combat and platforming abilities with LB plus the 4 face buttons was probably pushing a 360 (or ps3) controller too far. (tbh, hotkeys on a PC might actually make things much easier. Curtis?) Towards the end, during later puzzles, you're having to manage 3 platforming abilities, in between the odd fairly serious fight, it means you have to shuffle stuff around a fair bit.

I think I'll spoiler the rest, as I'm gonna touch of specific abilities and story and such:
A little break now, and then mop up on some side quests and then NG+ here I come.

Mario Land 3D
Wow, cracking game. Not as ground-breaking as Mario 64 (for obvious reasons) but an insane accomplishment none the same. Having been absent from Nintendo consoles since the 'Cube it's a right pleasure to once again be gaming in an environment that has - in my mind - always been the purest of experiences. You simply cannot do any better than a delicious Nintendo outing.

Off now to collect the rest of me coins.

Speedhaak wrote:

Having been absent from Nintendo consoles since the 'Cube it's a right pleasure to once again be gaming in an environment that has - in my mind - always been the purest of experiences. You simply cannot do any better than a delicious Nintendo outing.

Don't care what some people may think, but in my mind the Wii has some great games. Mario Gakaxy and it's sequel are amazing and among the greatest games ever. If you haven't played them, do yourself a favour and borrow a Wii with Mario Galaxy. You won't regret it.

The problem with the Wii is certainly not Nintendo. They made some amazing games for the console. Its just a shame not many others did.

Isn't that kind of an arbitrary condition, to make it exclusives only? The Wii has a completely different level of horsepower to the other two consoles, of course it's going to have more exclusives, it's difficult to port to. And on the other side, why bother to make exclusive games for the 360 and PS3? From a superficial perspective there's very little to distinguish them.

ERE, it's not just the Wii though. I reckon the GC before it had more exclusives worth playing than on Xbox or PS2. Reasons are probably twofold. One, the obvious Ninty first party amaze games. Two, a lot of third parties seem to just not bother with Nintendo console and do multi platform releases on the other consoles and PC. Result is that Nintendo console ends up with more exclusives to play.

Ok, not 'better' console, per se, but it's the console you could least do without if you want to play all the best games this generation has to offer. Either of the 360 or PS3 will cover the vast majority of the multi platform releases. But missing a Wii means missing a lot more great games than if you were missing one of the others. In that sense, it's a more essential console than the others.

What Matty sed.