This game has to be on this list as my first experience with a talking video game. Afterward I would run around the house shouting the phrases from this game, trying no tot touch the walls as I ran.
I have audio tape of me doing this, sort of, but it's not making an appearance here. For obvious reasons. Unless it's a simple sound bite. That means maybe.

Anyway the gameplay was pretty easy so a quarter went a long way. There were always rumors about how to kill Otto. shoot him in a certain part of the screen, shoot him three times upwards and three times horizontally, stuff like that.

OK. Game received and first half hour played. This gives me as much authority to critique it as any major review website.

That comment by Pinback about never reading the game forums because they will suck your will to live? Yeah, I understand perfectly. While the game was in transit to me I spent some time on the 2K forums. After a while I began to have an unreasoning urge to cancel the order and just delete the demo.
Everyone there was trashing the game! For example:

'Oh, it sucks! It's only half a game!'
'I beat it in ten hours and want my money back.'
'It's not a sandbox game but that's how it was advertised.'
'There's no side quests and things.'
'Wah! I have to buy additional DLC in order to get the whole game.'

Im not going to go into depth about all these complaints. These people, (every last male fifteen year-old that can't play a game with composite video inputs without whining like a little bitch), wanted the game to be something different. They wanted a GTA or a Saint's Row. The 2K designers made something different and they couldn't handle it. So they feel cheated. Well, fuck them and the short attention span they rode in on. I like this game.
This is less of a 'game' and more of a movie with interactive elements, actually. Sure there are car chases and gun fights and a surprising amount of sex. But here's the interesting part, You can only advance through the story. I mean, think of the first Zelda. Sure you could just run around the overworld slashing and burning stuff, but sooner or later you have to go into Dungeon One and move the plot along. That's what this game is. There is no 'choose your outcome' or 'every decision changes the story'. They took all the side quests out in order to keep the focus on the storyline. There's no Freeride mode but there doesn't have to be. It's rolled into the main storyline. You can get into plenty of trouble (if you want to) on the way to your destinations. Which is why I don't understand the non-sandbox thing. I do hope they make an extreme mode though, I like to jump the cars! And not have the stupid cops on me the MICRO-SECOND I do something evil.
Speaking of which; I have to dislike the gang member telepathy thing. If I shoot a gangster all the other gangsters citywide should not know about it instantly. The AI is sort of retarded. But aren't they all though.
Another thing I'm not terribly overjoyed about is the non- action-but-not-a-cut-scene sequence. This is where you need to direct your character someplace that isn't really necessary. Like:

] Walk out of the apartment.

(there's a lot of stuff like this)

They could have done the cut-scene then a fadeout to the exterior of the building. It's one of the things that makes me feel like the game was padded out. To make it play longer. Like buying a king sized candy bar then opening the package and seeing how much smaller the candy is than the package.
I guess there might be collectibles on the way out or something, but it has an overall 'fluff' feel to it.

Gunfights are OK on the PS3 but a mouse has way better aiming control. Plus, on the PC there was a center dot as well as a crossbar (in the last game) so sniping was a lot easier. This could prove challenging if I were to ever play it on hard mode.

It locked up on me the first time I started it. Weird. I thought that only happened on PCs. Had to do a total reset of the machine. Bing Crosby was on the car radio and he kept singing along though. Wonder if they rushed it through the beta testing.[/u]

I should break into this lame list to post a review of Mafia2 while it is fresh in my mind. I'm going to do this based on two points only.

1] I have played the DEMO for three days now on my PS3.

based on that, my wife has ordered the game for me, because she is the coolest!

2] The full version of the game is on it's way here, along with a fresh dualshock controller.


OK then.

Mafia II:

Better cars! The earlier Mafia game had names for the cars that had nothing to do with what they looked like. I had to make up my own names for them. For example, the Bolt Ace was the Ford model T. I called it the SqueegeeMobile. My nephews loved it.

The new game has car names that are similar to what the cars look like.

The Frigate..........Chevy Corvette
The Wasp...........Hudson Hornet
Thunderbolt........Ford Thunderbird

You get the idea. It's a fun little thing that costs them nothing. They drive better than the old game too. I hope they have as many jumps and crash areas. Let's hope you can shoot the wheels off of these as well.


Centerfolds. This is a collectible gimmick designed to lure male adolescents to cough up fifty bucks. There are 50 real Playboy centerfolds from the 1950's hidden around the city. You don't have to find them to beat the game. Remember that old slogan; 'I'd walk a thousand miles for a vertical smile.'? Czech2K is banking on it. They claim it's tasteful and more authentic. Whatever.

The cops are way more prevalent than in the first game and harder to kill. They are also apparently telepathic because if you shoot one they all know about it instantly.
The gangsters are the same way. You kill one and drive ten blocks away and another gangster will still try to kill you.

More after I've played the full game.

This is a recent addition. At first I was all negative because it is just another GTA ripoff and you have to shoot the police. Then I kinda got into the driving part of the game. Actually, I modified the music tracks so it only played Led Zeppelin songs. Then it became something better. It's funny how that one little tweak made the game so much better for me. The game does not have the car radio thing (it is the Thirties after all) but each section of Lost heaven has it's own theme music, much like DisneyWorld. So it's a real kick to be roaring through Downtown with 'Kashmir' blasting through the speakers and then head into some other part of the city and have 'When The Levee Breaks' start in. All this while driving like a madman at the wheel.


I have to edit in here how the graphics of the game simply astounded me when I first loaded it. I must have watched that demo movie six times. Incredible! Now it's all ho-hum
look how cheesy this game is. See what advancing tech will do to you.

I have to further edit in here about the art of crashing the cars in this game. Matter of fact, I will link a video of spectacular Mafia car crashes

[youtube][/youtube]


Note: The Mafia II demo was released just last week. My graphics card is too feeble to play it on the PC but it runs just fine on the PS3. I might have to actually get this game[/youtube]

Xbox has gone back to that hardware depository in the sky, namely my attic. I have the new Pirates, the cartoon version, but I don't really play it.

Is that the PC version? I have that around here somewhere.

Do you still have your Xbox hooked up? They released a successor on the Xbox and PS2, you know. It's the same name, although I suspect more than just graphics were upgraded.

I had this remake for a while but somehow it just didn't play as well for me, even though it was exactly the same game with better graphics.

AArdvark wrote:

One year for Christmas when I was about 14, my friend Jeff's mom took me shopping with her. She said she had no idea what to get Jeff for Christmas, so she just let me pick out a bunch of stuff from Toys R Us and that would be his Christmas.

Jeff and I had downloaded Pirates! and we liked playing it, but you couldn't get far without the copy protection wheel and the map, so ... well, we never got far. So I picked that out and a few weeks later it was sitting under his Christmas tree. With the map and the copy protection wheel, we got much further.

I greatly enjoyed that game -- still do, in fact. It was such a balance to keep your men happy but not piss off every other nation and have them shooting at your ships all the time!!

This game needs no introduction. I actually enjoyed this game more as an observer than a player. We gave my son a Super Nintendo for Christmas back in '98. He became so much better at playing this (I hate platform jumping games, it makes my blood pressure shoot up to unhealthy levels) that I simply would watch, help solve puzzles and sketch graph paper maps while he did the actual room to room stuff. A bonding process, you know?


THE
GAMEPAD PARENTING SKILLS
AARDVARK

Arrrrrrrrighty Then!

This was part of a floppy-swap that I did with another Commodore enthusiast. Because I had two 1541 drives and he didn't I got the better part of the deal. there were no instructions for this, which made it rather difficult to understand what the goals were. I could never understand why my crew became angry when I had what amounted to a floating city of ships with hundreds of men at my command.

I saw this title on sale in the bargain bin at Gold Circle. (The same store where I bought my 1200 baud modem BTW.)

So I went and picked it up for $7.99 or something, figuring that I could read the manual and really PLAY the game. Eventually I got to the point where I had made graph paper maps of the entire Caribbean and could usually find any treasure with only one piece of the map. I'd go on treasure hunting expeditions with one ship and retire with max gold.

There was never an arcade game that could do THAT! Until they devise a cabinet that can dispense mixed drinks with umbrellas in them it probably wont happen.



THE
MS. PAC-MAN
COCKTAIL VERSION
AARDVARK

But did it ever get you laid?

Oh, so it's guess AArdvarks list based on previous posts, is it.....

OK, fair enough.


Game Title:





This was actually a 'sleeper' game for me. I didn't know that I liked it for the first year or so after I got a job busing tables in a local restaurant. I was 16 and they had this cabinet in the bar. I would drop tip money in it after work. I sort of liked it's predecessor, Galaxian (until a bad experience turned that game from fun to hateful) so this looked like next level fun. It wasn't until I could reach level ten on a consistent basis that I realized I was actually deriving pleasure from my gaming experience. Ever since that moment of self discovery I have had a special spot for this game. This was one of two driving forces that absolutely required me do buy the Namco Museum download for the PS3.


(I liked Galaxian until I was invited to play doubles by a strange kid while I was in the arcade down the street from my house. The guy was so good at it that I simply walked away from the machine after a half hour of watching him play his game. I think he was on level twenty or thirty. Since then I don't think I've ever played the game, just on general principals.)

I'm going to guess ...

The Incredible Machine
Galaga
Lode Runner

Bumping this thread because we are all very curious what kind of games Aardvark likes.

Here is my guess:

6. Sopwith
5. Pirates!
4. Legends of Krynn
3. Boulderdash
2. Oo-Topos
1. Oo-Topos

Fuck you spammer! will now use this thread as..


AArdvark's top game list.

Disclaimer:

I don't really play games that much. Most likely because they are not productive enough. Stay tuned for the top five or six games that I have played.


THE
HOST BODY
AARDVARK