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Gameplay
By Rodentia
Best game level
Tivliz Asylum – Black
Yes it's on rails, yes it's almost too frantic to understand what's going on but it's also a glorious riot of action, noise and rockets. The only way to play this level is guns-blazing and charging like a maniac. The Matrix-moment in the employee washrooms - exploding ceramics, hand-to-hand combat, enemies piling in on all sides and nowhere to hide as the world slows and as the bullet trajectories become tracers in your mind - that moment is one of the very finest videogames have ever served up and owes it’s power to the pacing and progression built throughout the level.
First Planet – Loco Roco
An almost overwhelming shock floods over you the moment the first level loads. You stop playing. You check the box again. Then you switch the PSP back on and yep, that’s right – it really is the PSP and it really is a game of charm, fun, challenge, happiness. This is the Sony game that out Nintendos Nintendo. I can’t imagine we’ll ever see such a thing happen again but Lordy lets happily praise it while it’s here. Subsequent levels keep-up the incredibly high standards but none bests the breathtaking first. This is fine gaming.
The Fenix Estate - Gears of War
Simply the most beautiful place to ever feature in a videogame. That it hosts destruction is almost a sadness - the characters from Ico would be happy here, the courtyards and gardens ache to be filled with children, young couples in first-bloom-love - hell the cast of Mary Poppins would fit right in. You have to stop and just stare sometimes. Which means you probably deserve the explosive arrow-bolt that blows the arms off your torso. What pulls this into classic game-level territory is the way all the beauty is integrated so solidly with the gameplay: objects are more than just idly placed cover, they are real and right. The movement and pacing through these is perfect and the storming up the steps to Fenix’s house is literally breath-taking.
Freebird - Guitar Hero II
What an absolutely fantastic way to end a game this is. Really earn your way – really feel the achievement. Utterly glorious.
Most completed game.
Guitar Hero I
You play it all the way through because nailing songs 100% makes you feel like a rock god. And because fifty quid for the game and a controller makes you weep money unless you get proper value.
Loco Roco
The first game in years that has compelled us to find every secret, every pickup, every last little stupid buzzy thing, every Mui Mui, every time trial and every minigame. And to not feel like we’ve done that from OCD alone.
Ridge Racer 6
What it is about Ridge Racer 6 that keeps us going back for more? We can't really say, but all we know is that we love every bastard cheating second of it.
Polarium (GBA version)
One level for each day of the year? Gotta solve 'em all.
Best first day with a game
Guitar Hero
The fun starts before you even get the game home: who didn’t slide down the box cover on the bus home and have just a little press of the guitar neck buttons? Who? God damn you tell us their name now!
Dead Rising
For the sheer joy of twanging 100 zombies with a guitar and then discovering the Katana. And the lawnmower. And the boomerang. And... Well, you get the idea.
Black
For the moment at which you realise this isn't a traditional FPS. That it is a game that demands to be played with risk and bravery and imagination - charge the enemy, hope for health packs, keep moving, keep firing, forget ammo just screeeeeeeam through.
FIFA 2007 (360 version)
You're expecting a complete dog. You've played the previous 360 version, you know PES is the king - and yet... that first day with FIFA is extraordinary, long before you hate it for the barking achievements roster, well ahead of the discovery of it's built-in flaws - before then you will have sat slack-jawed as you replay goals on super slo-mo marvelling at the reality of it all. This is next generation. Oh and this is us contradicting ourselves just a bit. But we do that.
Most difficult moment in a videogame to explain to the missus
Dead Rising
Shouting at the zombies while hitting them with various items? Easy. Explaining why you're doing so wearing what appears to be a gay-cowboy costume? Less so.
Xbox Live
"I’ll be up in a minute love - I'm just setting the alarm clock for 5am so I can play games with some of those UK fuckers."
We Love Katamari
"Darling, what the blimmin hell is with the little green guy and the old man in tights?"
Loco Roco
“Yeah at this point you have to split them all up and make them sing and that wakes up the sun so you can go and eat a hidden tulip and then have some nice flies too. Why? Well because some soot has taken over various planets and the only way to free them is to roll around in a watery ball singing songs and that. Why are you carrying that suitcase?”
Best involuntary yelp
Black
"WHoooooooooooooooooooo" shouted as you dive headlong into an exploding brick wall in the last desperate move to finish the trench level. 'YEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeethe fuck haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa' you say. Wonderful.
Gears of War
Never have we been terrified to the point of physically turning off the console. EEEEEEEEEP!
DEFCON
10 million people killed by a single nuke. Oops. Giggle.
Loco Roco
“hehehehhe he heh e heh eheee” – all the fucking way through.
December 2006
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