Jim: ITALICS ITALICS ITALICS PLEEEEEEASE!
(exceptNickhegetsafreepass)
Hamza: I played some Halo 3 like every week and went out to San Francisco a couple of times to play Smash Court Tennis 3, Deer Hunter Tournament, N+ and Legendary for the third time.
Savant: This past week has been nothing but training for the SUPER SUMMER SMASH-OFF. Unsure what that is? Yeah, well, it’s just a small 2v2 Smash Brawl tournament my buddies are throwing. Things have gotten pretty heated, and some serious sh!t is really going down, for sure.
We were looking for a suitable trophy just the other day. We stumbled across a pimp cup at Spencer’s. It was green, mean, and had a huge money sign on it. As fitting as this may seem, we decided against buying it because the damn thing cost $20. Oh well.
What else? Hmm… Oh! I bought Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy for the Wii this week. As a shmup fan, this game is nirvana in disc format. The editors are rich and complex, yet basic and accessible. For anyone who enjoys games like Gradius, R-Type, or even Katamari Damacy, you really need to check this one out.
Nick: Slow week for gaming on my end. Still making my way through my Prizefighter career, and Don King is still hilarious. The coming week should be better. I bought Space Invaders Extreme for the DS, Spore Creature Creator, and I just got a preview build of a game whose name rhymes with Faxanadu Clue Pan.
Jim: Been all about the DS this week. Some Elite Beat Agents, and more Pokémon than any sane man should be allowed to enjoy. Beautifly fucking OWNS you, you cunts!
Also, I’ve been playing Lunar Knights, and there is so much wrong with that game it hurts, especially as it comes from Hideo “God” Kojima. It’s a great game in theory, but the retarded blocking, restricting energy recovery system, tiny inventory and badly paced combat really ruin what could have been an amazing action game. I’m still going to play through it, but the more I do, the more disappointing I’m getting.
Topher: Stop what you’re doing and go get a copy of Soul Bubbles for the DS. I’ve been enjoying that game more than I have anything on Nintendo’s handheld in quite a while. Aside from that, I’ve just been playing preview builds of stuff Nick told me not to talk about, so I won’t, because he hits when he’s angry. And it hurts. On the inside. 🙁
DMV: After finishing Metal Gear Solid 4, I went ahead and played some River City Ransom, Escape from Bug Island, and Red Steel with friends. Been running around a lot, so gameplay time has been minimized. Instead, I’m hanging out at AnimeNEXT, where you can see all the coverage over on Japanator.
Colette: Playing Carcassone and Puzzle Quest on Live, Rock Band to work on my World Tour, Indiana Jones Lego for my DS and Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors for Wii, which I’m really enjoying despite the fact it’s on rails.
Samit: Is it bad that I’ve been sitting here for five minutes, staring at Nick’s blurb and trying to figure out what in the hell he’s talking about with that rhyme there? Yeah, it’s bad, isn’t it? Damn it.
Anyway, I saved right before the “big choice” at the end of GTA IV, so I was able to play through both endings. Saying I liked the “green icon” ending over the “red icon” one isn’t a spoiler, right? It is? Well, too frickin’ bad. I don’t feel that way. Now that I’m done with the story of the game, I’d like to keep playing because I think I’m a little under 70% done, but other games await…
By that, I mean The Orange Box. I booted up Half-Life 2 yesterday and noticed that the date on my most recent save file was May 19th (in other words, I hadn’t played the game in a month). So I traipsed all the way through Route Kanal with my trusty airboat, and I saved right at the beginning of the next chapter, Black Mesa East. That game is awesome.
Niero: I’m playing with aluminum foil and sticks! And replaying though MGS2 🙂
Gameboi: Other than a brief romp with Rock Band, it was Metal Gear 4 once again. Nothing else managed to capture my limited attention span this week.
P.S. It was hard not to italicize the entire thing, Jim. You tempted me 😉
Dale: I wish I had something interesting and rare to list, but I don’t. This past week, 100% of my gaming time has been dedicated to Metal Gear Solid 4. As a reviewer on the game, Brad Rice was playing this game way before the rest of us. He asked me to let him know when I got to Act 4 of MGS4. A few days back I finally found out why. Amazing!
Justin: All the good buzz MGS4 has been getting finally prompted me to play through Metal Gear Solid — I’ve only ever played Snake Eater — and start on Sons of Liberty. I’ll be playing as Old Snake soon enough.
I also started on Terranigma, which has been pretty fun so far.
Chad: This week it was nothing but (more) Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, N+, and LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures (Xbox 360 version). I don’t know what it is about those LEGO games, but, man, I love them so much.
Samit: I presume you finally figured out how to save in LEGO Indiana Jones, then?
Chad: Yes, I did. I think there was a glitch, as when I restarted it auto-saved automatically. Unfortunately, there is a new dilemma — one ever more baffling than the first.
In order to get 100% in the game, you have to collect 10 artifacts in each level. On one stage, my artifact tracker accessory says two artifacts are in the same place. Perplexed, I checked online and found out there is only one there — the other is in another location. Well, the other location is empty and the tracker still tells me that another artifiact is still in the place I already got one.
Because of this, I will never be able to collect that final artifact, since the game thinks there is an artifact where there really isn’t one. I guess another glitch. This one lethal as my OCD completionist side is so angry. Talk about annoying! 🙁 🙁 🙁
Hamza: Return your game, it’s defective.
Samit: Yeah, I second that notion, Chad…try exchanging your copy.
Man, glitches piss me off so much. I remember this really annoying one in Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage! (it’s similar in that it prevented me from fully beating the game). You could get 116% completion in that game because Insomniac put in 16 “skill points” for doing extra stuff. One of them was beating this race within 30 seconds or something. I was able to get my time down to, like, under 27 seconds…but it never gave me the damn skill point. Being stuck at 115% was so aggravating, ugh.
Nick: Why does this games of the week emailer keep turning into multi-thread
conversations? Jim’s job is hard enough, what with me not italicizing anything. Ever.
Jim: Yeah, you fucking clutzes never think of Jim “has to italicize everything Nick Chester has ever written” Sterling, do you? Do you? I also have to transcribe your insane drivel and Hamza’s drunken shenanigans every week.
Hamza: Ohhh poor you Jim, you have to work so hard writing two paragraphs that have nothing to do with videogames and then copy pastaing our writing. WAHHHHHHHHHH 😀
Jim: Well I know I’ll never make the sacrifices you do. I don’t envy those back-breaking hours spent looking at half naked gamer girls and getting drunk on a Sunday afternoon.
Back of the net!
Dyson: I love this column. To bad it always gets posted around the ass crack of the evening here in Cali.
If anyone cares, though, I’m about to play some Zack and Wiki. I feel it’s high time I completed this game, and thanks to Tactix’s twitter about it, I’m making the rest of my day about playing it.
Also, Happy Birthday Husky Hog!
Samit: Zack & Wiki is awesome. Two of my best friends own it, and we some great times on a couple of evenings just sitting there solving puzzles as a group. They never beat it, though; apparently, the last puzzle is hard, but not in a good way — they said it was poorly designed and “stupidly hard”, and it’s too long (so if you fail, you have to go all the way back to the beginning).
Hamza: I get drunk Saturday nights thank you very much.
Jim: Then I retract all admiration. That takes no effort at all.
Hamza: … 🙁
