On yer bike.

Rubbish name for a post but it's actually the name of an achievement in Fifa 09. You get it for scoring with a bicycle kick. You know, like Trevor Sinclair did for QPR.



Look at that beauty.

Anyway, after four seasons of Be A Pro and a full season of Manager mode I got a bit fucked off with it. I then, like the idiot motherfucker I am, scored one when signed in on my mate's gamercard. Sob.

Time for some whore-o-strategy.

Initial plan was to use the juggle move (LT + tap RB repeatedly) and then flick it up and overhead kick it all with one player. This is doable but you have to juggle outside of the box or else the keeper fucks you up.

So then it was a case of using two controllers, setting it to 20 mins, getting four defenders sent off (for Bury - HA!) whilst letting Brazil's marauding forward line get to the line and cross it in.

After three headed goals I connected with one and put it wide (Ronaldinho you bastard) and after seven headed goals I finally connected with one properly and it was goal-me-do.

Advice: chip the cross in. LB + X whilst aiming towards the near side of the box.

I didn't save the replay. So I leave you with this, THE BEST GOAL EVER SCORED IN FIFA.

Kai Temple's 2008ness.

2008 hasn't been great for gaming really. A few long-awaited games turned up and turned out to be not all that, Microsoft went utterly cunterly with their pricing and GTA4 (just GTA4).

But here's my provisional award-me-do things.


Full Game of the Year:

Fifa '09. Well, probably Euro 2008 as that was the one with all the good ideas. I've been harping on for years about footie games needing some innovation and EA really provided it this year. An amazing move-set, the Be A Pro mode and all those goal-celebrations made for quite a novel take on the usual footie nonsense.

Bubbling under: Bully, Burnout Paradise


XBLA Game of the Year:

Geometry Wars 2. Oh God... it's so good. I hated GW1. The shitty music and repetitive gameplay did nothing for me but GW2's range of excellent modes are much more suited to quick sessions. Great visuals, addictive as crack-flavoured Angel Delight. The perfect XBLA game.

Bubbling under: Braid, Omega Five


Multiplayer Game of the Year:

Rainbow Six Vegas 2. The original Vegas was great online but this one refined everything to perfection. The EXP system was vastly improved, the maps and modes were excellent and the achievements encouraged some variation in weapon useage. Also, bizarrely, you don't seem to get many cunts playing the game (as they tend to stick to Halo3, GTA and CoD4). Great!

Bubbling under: Burnout Paradise, Mercenaries 2


Surprise Hit of the Year:

Bully. Rockstar may have fucked up on GTA4 (sorry but it was a dull, overblown borefest) but Bully is one of the best sandbox games I've played. The humour was excellent, evoking memories of Skool Daze on the speccy, there was tonnes to do in the game and the music was the best I've heard in a game in years. A much tighter game than GTA4 and a much better one too.

Bubbling under: Alone In The Dark, Gripshift


Lemon of the Year:

Shaun White Snowboarding. A piece of shit snowboarding game endorsed by a cunt. Horrible controls ruin the game but four dull mountains, a rubbish event structure and some stupid writing make this a total lemon. Jumper and

Bubbling under: Jumper, Golden Axe: Beast Rider


Disappointment of the Year:

Mercenaries 2. Not a bad game but glitched, unfinished and uninspired. Half the game Mercs 1 was and only really redeemed by the fun co-op mode.

Bubbling under: Far Cry 2, Civilisation Revolution


Best Graphics of the Year:

Dead Space. It may get a bit repetitive but the game looks excellent with a big, chunky main character, lots of gory decapitations, some impressive looking tech and a few nice setpieces.

Bubbling under: Geometry Wars 2, Far Cry 2

Kai Review: Left 4 Dead (360)

Left 4 Dead review.

Initially exciting FPS that soon gives way to monotony as waves of zombies attack you and your three co-op buddies over and over. Looks and feels like a mod. Lacks substance, plot and variety. Would be utterly ignored if it didn't feature zombies. Not as good as The Club. Playing as zombies online is ruined by them being far too easy to kill.

Some zombies.

PEOWW's Maf and Lurk reviewed it and gave it 8/7. I'd have given it a 5. For being blaverage.

Kai Review: Dash of Destruction (XBLA)

The latest freebie XBLA game 'Dash of Destruction' hit this week. It was designed as part of a contest promoting Doritos or something and was then developed by Ninja Bee (Keflings, Band of Bugs) and involves dinosaurs running around eating Dorito delivery trucks.

Dash of Destruction review.

Plays like an event from Fuzion Frenzy. Gets old way before you'll max the achievements (takes 15 mins). Ugly visuals. Rubbish controls. Worse than the average community game. Thinks it's funny but it isn't. Truck missions are far too easy. Dino missions have even less depth than Rampage. Worse than Aegis Wing but better than Yaris.

Dinosaur running around a tiny city.

Full review this Sunday on PEOWW from me and Tiq (LOL).

Kai Review: Meteos Wars (XBLA)

Okay, so I made a post about it before but this is in format now. An even shorter version would say 'goodish but makes me sob and is better with a stylus'.

Meteos Wars review.

Standard 'connect three' style puzzler. Just like the DS original. Suffers from no stylus but uses both sticks to control it and it works okay. Except they don't make the game any slower so it's bollocksly hard even on Easy. Looks great. Nice music. Fair amount of replay value. Worth the points... just.

Some two-player puzzle larks with spacey backdrop.

Full-oh review this sunday on PEOWW from me and the boy Steven Crompton.

Return to Kai Temple. Review format.

As you can see from the ordering of these posts, I just wrote a quickie review of Powerup Forever. Very quick actually, with lots of tiny sentences. I quite like the idea and so I'm going to make all my RTKT reviews short and to the point (a bit like Stu Campbell's rather clever One Line World site.

So here's the format.

One paragraph. All the basic info. A bit of opinion. No score. Screenshot with straight-forward caption.

The full-fat reviews will still appear in PEOWW though.

Kai Review: Powerup Forever (XBLA)

Okay, no-one's actually bought Powerup but anyway I'm going to try to get a review done on PEOWW (Roddy McDEOWWWW). In the meantime, here's my early impressions...

Circley things coming to get you on a nice red backdrop

Powerup Forever review:

Twin-stick shooter. Looks beautiful. Very challenging. Good fun. A little less eye-searing than Geo Wars 2 and a little less good. Weapon powerups seem a bit pointless and stingey. Decent risk/reward scoring mechanic. Namco are still cunts though.

Meteos, XBLA and the DS in general.

The DS is dogshit. It's a lovely bit of kit, yes and it lets you play GBA games (Rock N Roll Racing for the nostalgic win) but the games are mostly fuck awful.

DS GAMES = cack.
REASON = all DS games seem to fall into these categories.


1. Brain games. Fucking pointless dogshit that assigns and arbitrary number to you and says that's how thick a twat you are. Made worse by the fact that the best one doesn't understand the word 'blue' or the number four.

2. 3D games. Fuck me... the DS can't do 3D any more convincingly than an Amiga yet they keep doing these lazy ports of games that aren't even good on the PSP.

3. My First Barbie Horse Bratz Simulators. I don't even know what they are but they sell to eight year old American girls and there are a billion of them on the system.

4. Puzzle games. Some good, some bad. Usually ruined by inappropriate controls.


To be honest, the only game that really held my attention was Meteos, a standard 'connect three' puzzler from the bloke who did Rez and Lumines (does Lumines have any actual point to it?).

Dunno why but I loved it. It had an old-school addictiveness that I hadn't seen since Clockwiser on the Amiga (game of win).

Meteos Wars on XBLA

Now it's out on XBLA sans touch controls. Does it still work? Yeah, kind of. Unfortunately the game is still incredibly fast and tricky and they don't really give you a break because of the controls so it's all a bit upsetting really. Is good though and has a fair bit of stuff to unlock I think.

Full review this sunday on PEOWW. It could get an 8 or a 2 at this rate though.

Last seen online like a week ago.

Hngggh.

Not been online since last week cos I've been back home to see the folks. Did sneak in a few games of Fifa with a mate. It fucking pisses on Pro Evo. Fact.

PEOWW-faced killers have got a game of Team Fortress 2 happening on Wednesday. Big wednesdays for the win.

Whoring.

You know what I like? I like to dance, I love to prance! And by that I mean I like whoring for achievements. All dirty, like.

Recently I've whored myself on the following;

Quantum of Solace (430/1000) - a really likeable, basic shooter that's as linear as a line of ears. Nabbed the obligatory collect-oh achievement (pick up all the cell phones). All that was left were the two highest difficulties (they stack) and a bunch of multiplayer horseshit that might be worth doing during the next drought. Was lent to me by Señor Cale so we could review it for PEOWW.

A doable max. Which means I'll actually have to buy it next year. Hmph.

Fuzion Frenzy (1000/1000) - I already had about 500 on this but charged through the multiplayer ones with Wave Six's Danny and then mopped up the remaining single player ones. It's not awful but is ruined by the stupid, random card thing that gives you bonuses like multipliers, multiplier steals, multiplier reversals and a bunch of other things that mean you can lose a tournament outright if the CPU plays one. Pretty easy tho.

Madden '08 (895/1000) - easily maxed I'd imagine but I can't be arsed. Is a stupid bloody sport. Got most of the achvs by simming the games. Brill! Lent to me by CheneyHeadshot/Dogmeat from the PEOWW forum.

Madden '09 (355/1000) - no simming allowed. Achievements on this game are stupid. In real football terms they'd be like 'score three overhead kicks using Barnsley' or something. 355 is a good return though.

A Kingdom For Keflings (200/200) - another one added to the max-oh list. An easy 200 with just a couple of niggly multiplayer achvs. Full of pricks online as well, surprisingly. Neat game though. My review here.

Literally terrifying gamerpic.

Aside from that I'm making slow progress on Burnout: Paradise (Burnout License takes far too long to get and that's not even the last one) and Fifa '09 (fun but chorish when it comes to the achvs).

PSP homebrew love.

Bought any XNA Community Games? Have you fuck. They're gash. If I wanted to play some Computer Science student's fucking dissertation I'd start gaming on the PC again.

However there is one game that looked interesting and that was Jelly Car (or Jello Car in the States *sob*). Not sure how much I'd pay for it under normal circumstances (maybe 400 M$P) but it doesn't matter now because some clever chap called Drakon has ported it to the PSP.

JellyCar on the PSP AKA sexy chops.

It plays the same, looks lovely and saves you the time it'll take to arrive on the 360 and money as well. AKA win. Get it HERE but bear in mind that your PSP will need to be Jonny B. Firmwared up to the fucking max, Son.

Also, the new version of PSPUAE (the PSP Amiga emulator) has been updated to version 0.72. I did my customary test (fired up Rodland). It's still too slow to be enjoyable but is getting better.

For more PSP homebrew goodness check out QuickJump. It's a bit good.

Worst gaming week ever.

The thing about running PEOWW is that we can't just review the AAA titles. That'd get boring and we'd end up giving everything at least eight out of ten, like Dave Gibbons from BBC's Teletext gaming page (actually I've not even read that for like two years... is it still there?).

Nope, occasionally you've got to try out the lemons (unless Colin reviews them for you first, God bless you Colin) and this week has been one of those weeks.

First up was Mortal Kombat vs DC. My review will tell you all you need to know but the short version is that 3D Mortal Kombat games are basically worthless. It's never worked and if they want to ever get good again they should make a 2D one with loads of characters, fatalities and about twenty palette-swapped ninjas. Just like Mum used to make 'em.

Shaun White is a twat.

Worse than that though is Shaun White Snowboarding which is one of the worst games I've played this year. Horrible controls ruin this one but pretty much everything in the game is hateful. I half expected Bam Margera to race you in a shopping trolley.

Hey, let's all pay £40 for Shaun White Snowboarding.

On the plus side, I bought it for £17.99 and lashed it at GAME for £22. AKA massive win and also got rid of my copy of Left 4 Dead which is a good thing as the game was bollocks.

Welcome (back) to Kai Temple.

What's this all about then?

Well, I'm Richie and I'm the editor of a site called PEOWW which, among other things, brings the BLEOWW. It's about games and is a bit good. This blog is for random musings about games, achievement whoring and running PEOWW (dkadeoww).

I'll hopefully be able to keep it updated quite regularly and hopefully it'll be good or something.