Return To Kai Temple

Music is dead. Sorry.

2009-07-28T16:23:00.000-07:00

Fuck my Christ. I've spent the best part of the last 25 years utterly hating the fucking concept of Simply Red. I still do, of course, that'll never change and I'll literally cheat death if necessary just so that I can dance on Mick Hucknall's grave, but something bad has happened. Someone has come along and created music worse than Manchester's premier suppliers of melodic, pop/soul cuntitude. Worse than Blue. Worse than The fucking Lighthouse Family. Worse than M-People, D-ream and Puff Daddy. Worse than cancer of the puppy. Worse than replacing your eyes with hot bees. Worse than John Terry's stupid fucking face.

In cultural terms, we are the Elizabeths to his Josef.

They're called BrokenCYDE. I won't waste more than one word describing their name: cunts. I will however now go into what can only turn out to be a breakdown (emotional not descriptive) regarding what they've done. I just hope that by the end of it, this article doesn't break this blog's size limit.

So, BrokenCYDE. What are they? What THE FUCK are they? Well, let's take a look at them.

(Left-Right) Bloke from IT Crowd, Posh Spice, Downs Child, Bald in five years.

You know how Wayne Rooney's wife likes to wear the top fashion labels but unfortunately all at the same time? That's what BrokenCYDE are like. They've got the emo hair, the punky tattoos, the attitude posing, the 'don't be gay, Sparky' neck scarves and a mixture of colours last seen in a level of Manic Miner. Kind of early Take That meets Busted. Lost Prophets meets Patrick Wolf.

If their image is fucking horror in pixelated form, the music is, in a word, upsetting. It upsets on every level and is every bit as confused, and yet contrived, as their satorial ineptitude. The sound (checks Wiki) is described as Hip-Hop/Screamo/Crunk. Yep, me neither.

Crunk, it seems, is a mixture of stripped down beats and hip-hop that acts as nothing more than frat-boy party music. In BrokenCYDE's case, this equates to weak electro breaks, non-descript synths and - get ready to shudder - vocals absolutely dripping in vocoder (the pitchshifting effect used by Cher on 'I Believe in Life After Love' and most Victoria Beckham solo singles).

BrokenCYDE's vocalist 'Se7en'. Part GAP advert/part offender's register/all cunt.

At this point you might be thinking 'just another bunch of pop puppets, why get your panties in such a bunch?'

Well, that's the thing. Unlike Busted's brand of dreary, ultra-safe pop-punk or Westlife's mother's day present ballads, BrokenCYDE aren't marketed at kids particularly. They aren't even signed to a major label (indeed they are signed to the hip-hop label Broken Noize who feature, among others, most of Cypress Hill and House of Pain's members) either. This is what, from what I can tell, passes as alternative music for today's kids and, to make things worse, nestled in with the pop bullshit are screamy vocals (a combination more jarring than a jar filled with jars being transported in a Cockney's car).

Now that'll be the 'screamo' part of their wiki description. Time for a history lesson. In the late '70s we had punk, in the early '80s the Americans stole it, added more violence and shouting, and called it hardcore. Then in the mid-'80s a more progressive and intelligent form of punk came along called Post-Hardcore. This splintered into a genre called 'Emo' or 'Emotional Hardcore'. It was characterised by heartfelt lyrics, intelligent and off-kilter music and often shouty vocals and, believe it or not, it was good.

Rites of Spring being intense and good.

Now, like all good things, that got noticed by the major labels, corrupted, distilled, defanged and ultimately destroyed which led to bands like Funeral For A Friend (whiney, floppy-fringed cunts who look and sound like every other fucking Emo band), Lost Prophets (desperately trying to be American floppy-fringed cunts who only stop sounding like every other band when they add turntables in order to commercialise their sound even more), Fightstar (cunt from Busted's attempt at being something other than a bitch) and all that American shit like My Chemical Romance (if Bam Margera was a band), Jimmy Eats World (Jimmy sucks arse) and Panic At The Disco (panic every time they come on the radio more like).

BrokenCYDE have taken it even further and stripped out the emotion, the punk ethics, the guitars and the political lyrics. They've just kept the floppy-fringed cunt screaming in a corner whilst the fake suntanned cunts who make up the rest of his band of fuckbuckets rap about having sex and drinking.

A fan as spotted on www.fairiesvampires.com - Cut. Long and deep, Love.

Perhaps the saddest thing about this is that the cycle has now been broken. Kids in the '50s listened to Elvis. Their parents, raised on classical and jazz standards, lost their minds. In the '70s there was punk, a reaction to the overblown pomposity of the prog and glam rock genres. The '80s saw hardcore punk, thrash metal and ultimately death metal and the '90s saw Nirvana bring grunge rock to the mainstream whilst industrial and goth music from the likes of Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails became heavily playlisted by music radio and TV whilst the Norwegians went mental with 'black metal' and started murdering each other.

Now the kids are only shocking the last generation by listening to lame dogshit like BrokenCYDE who, sure, say 'fuck' more often than Cher might but are still pedaling a varition on the same theme. If I had kids and they brought this home, I'd be well within my rights to feed them a Napalm Death CD WHOLE and tell them they are getting it wrong. Tell them that they're supposed to be pushing things forward and not conforming to this empty, souless music otherwise they might as well start listening to Motley Crue for all that this band are worth.

LYRICS

Freaxx by BrokenCYDE

I walk into the club looking kind of sexy now. [SEXY NOW!]
I see these shorties in the corner, they started making out. [MAKING OUT!]
They pull their panties down,[DOWN!] they take their pants off.[OFF! ]
And then we started getting freaky (on the dance floor.)

Shake it mommy give it to me like you need some love. [NEED SOME LOVE!]
I got some bottles in the caddy, we can open up.[OPEN UP!]
Let's get drunk tonight,[TONIGHT!] baby we don't have to fuck
[ TO FUCK!]
And bring your friend along, (maybe we can have some fun.)

Let's get freaky now, let's get fucking freaky now. [NOW!] x3
Let´s get freaky now, let´s get freaky now

I got these bitches all tipsy trying to sex me.
I know they want it, alcoholics are some sex freaks.
This ex and chronic gots me wanting to get messy.
So let's get messy girls, come on let's go get messy girls.

Come on bitch, you know you want this.
That hardcore shit make you feel the toxic.
Versace, Rolex watches.
Bently coups with the 20's droppin.
Convertible top, and the wheels spin.
I can taste that ice when my grill is in.
If you want me baby feel me again.
'cause I don't waste my time with lesbians.

Let's get freaky now, let's get fucking freaky now. [NOW!] x3
Let´s get freaky now, let´s get freaky now

[LIAR!] [[LIAR!]]

Oh baby why did you have to lie to me.
I can't play no more games.
These thoughts are slowly controlling me.
You're turning off the flames.
[So GO baby GO baby.]
You don't want me.
[So GO baby GO baby.]
Come and get me.
[So GO baby GO baby.]
You don't want me.
[So GO baby GO!]
Come and get me.
You don´t want me.
Come and get me
You don´t want me
Come and get me

[YEAH!!]

Let's get freaky now, let's get fucking freaky now. [NOW!] x3
Let´s get freaky now, let´s get freaky now

Lads, you're bellends.

Sacred 2 review-me-do

2009-07-27T16:26:00.000-07:00

I didn't review this for PEOWW so here's my thoughts.

God damn you, GTA. Ever since that game came out, game worlds just seem to be getting bigger and bigger. I grew up thinking that the mansion in Jet Set Willy (roughly 80 screens) was huge. These days I could actually live inside the likes of Fuel or Mercenaries 2 and the twenty or so extra hours I spent getting the 'Find All Locations' achievement on Two Worlds (and that's after I completed the entire game) indicated that things weren't going to get any more compact in the near future.

So, Sacred 2 is here (did any of you play Sacred 1? Me neither) and, as expected, it's a monster. On the plus side, it's a beautiful and interesting game world with tons of nice details and lots to do and see. On the less tasty side, the camera angle (a Diablo-esque top down view) means you'll only ever see a few metres of it at any one time. That's right, this is old school RPG action. A dungeon crawler in every sense except that for most of the game you're not actually in one.

Let's not worry too much about the plot except to say that your traditional fantasy elements are still there but with a nice futuristic edge that, in practical terms, means that you'll be mixing up your swords, bows and shields with laser weapons. For the most part though, RPG players will be treading very familiar ground here.

As ever, you can't just jump right in. Sacred 2 demands that you make choices right away regarding your character class (there are six to choose from) and your chosen deity (which will grant you a god-given super power that you can use in times of difficulty). After a little soul-searching you'll make your choices and will get into the main meat of the game.

There is, of course, a main quest to follow but there are also hundreds of side quests. Anyone looking to get a sweet 1000GS out of this game needs to know that you'll have to complete at least 40% of those quests. I've been playing (checks watch) for f'ing EVER and I'm just over 20% in. Argh! The quests are your usual mix of killing, escorting and searching and are punctuated with some decent storytelling and lots of genuinely funny humour. Indeed, it's worth reading all the gravestones in the game (and yes, there's an achievement in that too) as some of them are hilarious.

Combat seems at simple enough at first (you basically run around getting into fights every few seconds) but Sacred 2 soon reveals a staggering depth to inventory management. Aside from your main equipment (weapons and armour) there are also plenty of other things to consider. Your attributes (strength, dexterity etc), Combat Arts (spells), runes (for learning and powering up Combat Arts), potions, alchemy items and bonus adding rings/amulets all have a huge effect on the way your character plays. Every choice you'll make will have consequences and it'll all seem pretty overwhelming. In the end, I just looked for a spell that looked good and have ploughed all my resources into making it reasonably badass because I just can't be arsed worrying about it all anymore.

That's Sacred 2's problem. It's an enjoyable and addictive game but there's just too much of it. Too many things to consider, too much text to read, too many quests and the map is big enough to suffocate a horse with it. The achievement for revealing 50% of the game world is already looking like a chore. The thing is, I'm still playing it. Still enjoying it. After Oblivion and Two Worlds (shut up, it's good) I needed another good RPG on the 360 and this delivers. It's not perfect, not by a long shot, but Diablo/Dungeon Siege players will get a lot of value from it (especially as it's a shoe-in for a quick price drop) and once it gets its hooks in you, that's that.

Avoid the Limited Edition (it's gash and the figurine belongs in a f'ing Kinder Egg) but pick up the game if you fancy losing a lot of time to a loot-loaded adventure. It's a nice change of pace from all the shooting/fighting/driving games on the system and the slow-but-steady trickle of achievements should keep you interested. It'll be a very impressive 1000 on your Gamercard as well.

7/10

Fight Night 4 is shit.

2009-07-13T14:14:00.000-07:00

In lieu of a proper review, here's what you need to know...

the knockouts look all wrong compared to FNR3. the sweat is unconvincing, the movement of the player being dropped is even worse.

prefered the focusing system when getting up from a knockout, this new thing is gash.

the cut damage is non-existent.

the online XXL etc achvs are like the GRAW leaderboard ones and the current champs are asking for 4000M$P to fight people who aren't their friends.

the parrying system is gone.

the haymakers are mapped to RB.

you can punch someone with a right hook consecutively and not knock them out and then feebly graze them and they crumble.

minigames are RUBBISH.

the trainer corner system, whilst better than FNR3, involves too much faffing in menus.

booking a fight is needlessly convoluted.

I've rinsed it for 750+ GS and this fucker is now on eBay.

Stupidly numbered achievements.

2009-05-17T13:16:00.000-07:00

ARGH!

LUXOR 2

12 Gates of Luxor Temple (14) Match 12 or more spheres with a single shot.
5 Days of Thoth (15) Put together 5 chain reactions.
Challenge of Horus (19) Complete the Challenge of Horus.
Glory of Osiris (18) Achieve a perfect rating on all bonus rounds.
Golden Ankh Coin (16) Collect 15 or more coins in a single level.
Horns of Hathor (17) Complete Adventure Mode on the Normal difficulty.
Life! Health! Prosperity! (15) Complete a level without losing a life.
Magic of Isis (19) Complete Adventure Mode on the Expert difficulty level.
Pharaoh's Treasury (16) Collect 100 pieces of gems and jewelry.
Royal Sharpshooter (16) Complete a level with 100% accuracy.

Football Manager 06

Sign a Player (1) Sign a player.
Win a Match (2) Win a competitive match.
5 Xbox Live Games (6) Play 5 cups or tournaments on Xbox Live.
Clean Sheet (3) Play a match without conceding a goal.
First Xbox Live Game (3) Play your first cup or tournament on Xbox Live.

Daft fuckers.

State of the PEOWW

2009-04-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

We've had a week off but I'm doing some bits and pieces for this weekend.

First up, we've added a Twitter thing. This can be accessed by any of the main writers for the site. I'm still a little unsure if Twitter has any use at all, so that's why I'm leaving up to others to make it good. Our good friend Mafro seems to know how to use it.

I'm writing and researching a piece about emulation on the PSP. The homebrew scene for that thing is still very active and cacks on the DSHB scene. So far the Megadrive and Arcade emulators seem to be the best ones.

Also looking to finish up a piece about the easiest 1000s out there for my regular(ish) Achievement Whore series. I've done most of the factual stuff but it needs padding out to make it even slightly entertaining to read.

I've got fucking Modest Mouse stuck in my head. Fucking Rock Band 2.

Some shit I've played recently.

2009-04-30T04:50:00.000-07:00

Poor old Return To Kai Temple. I've not been giving this blog much love recently so here's a quick update. I've recently played some decent stuff, some gash stuff and some whorey stuff. Here's the highlights...

Saint's Row 2 - I hate GTA games. All of them apart from the first one. The first one was good because it was truly sandbox. You just had to hit a score target, but how you did that was up to you. None of this story shite.

Well, colour me sexually confused. Saint's Row 2 is amazing. There is loads to see, loads to do, lots of customisation, a decent story, some moments of comedy. It's the best example of the genre in years. Even the 'gangsta' stylings don't really annoy me but maybe that's because I based my character on the Duke from Escape From New York. Am surprised at how fantastic this game is in co-op also.

Verdict: excellence.

Resident Evil 5 - not nearly as good as Resi 4 but miles better than any of Resi 4's imitators. Forces too many playthroughs and has some fairly dull levels but I beat the game five times and never really got bored. The game is maxed at 1000GS but the DLC for the extra 200 can go fuck itself.

Verdict: very good

Fallout 3 - Oblivion but set in a landfill site. I want to love it but I can't. It bores me senseless.

Verdict: tramp simulator.

Trivial Pursuit - acquired in a tasty deal with Burnout Ultimate Box. Fairly straightforward conversion of the board game but with an annoying fucking habit of asking you easy questions like 'Pearl Jam were part of a music scene that originated in which US city' and then asking you to pick it from a map without telling you what the four multiple choice options actually are.

Verdict: alright I suppose.

Peggle - addictive but frustrating bastard.

Verdict - worse for you than crack.

WHORE-OH SELECTION

CSI - easy but soul-destroying.
Surf's Up - reasonably fun.
Open Season - really quite shit.
Cars Mater-National - a bit dismal.

Kai Review: Onechanbara

2009-03-09T00:49:00.000-07:00

Dubious hack and slasher that combines all-out action with sketchy perversion. More enjoyable and interesting than you might expect though with a decent fighting system and lashings of comedy gore. Somehow manages to be a lot of fun despite all the backtracking and awful bosses.

Girl in bikini decapitating a zombie.

Kai Review: Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection (360)

2009-03-03T07:45:00.000-08:00

A sizeable collection of old Mega Drive games given a barebones treatment with no real graphical upgrades and absolutely no online functionality whatsoever. Overall the games range from great (Comix Zone) to gash (Flicky) although the stars of the show are the coin-ops Shinobi and Alien Syndrome. Plenty of Sonic and Ecco for those who picked the less good option in the biggest 16-bit war (or those of you who want an easy thousand gamerscore).

Some title screens of old Sega shite.

FIFA OCD horror.

2009-02-22T16:14:00.001-08:00

When it comes to gamerscore I'm not overly fussed by the total score. I just want to max out games. However, unrounded gamerscores piss me off. 8pt achievements can get to fuck. So I was rather pissed off when FIFA '09 fucked my score for an impressive four months.

I just posted this on PEOWW. Yes, I know it's very silly.

FUCKING YES!

Since the 11th of fucking October I've had a fucking 9 at the end of my gamerscore because of...

Hence

The fix for this is to play for FIFTY FUCKING HOURS to get ONE FUCKING GAMERSCORE. To make it shitter if you set a match to five min halves, you'll only get ten mins of playtime towards the fifty hours. Even though a ten min match in reality takes at least thirteen mins cos of cutscenes, stoppages and set-up.

So this week I've eschewed actual gaming so I can do this

and now I'm this

Kai Review: Rise of the Argonauts (360)

2009-02-21T16:44:00.000-08:00

Tedious hack and slasher that takes simplistic combat and bogs it down in hours of pointless conversations and cutscenes. In an already oversubscribed genre this has nothing that makes it stand out from the crowd. If you want good combat buy Conan, if you want a better story (and conversation) get Oblivion or Mass Effect. If you want to sleep for fucking ever, buy this.

Jason talking again.

Kai Review: R-Type Dimensions (XBLA)

2009-02-10T07:45:00.000-08:00

Faithful recreation of the first two R-Type games with a nifty option to switch from 2D to 3D on-the-fly. As difficult as it ever was (AKA hellish) but still great. They've added online co-op. It's not very stable. 1200M$P. Worth it. Just. Buy Omega Five instead though.

Big red alien blocking a tunnel.

Update my PEOWW, Doctor

2009-02-09T01:24:00.000-08:00

Well, the new PEOWW is up and running. At first glance it's pretty similar to the old one but it's now powered by Wordpress which is a good thing as it means I can update articles much quicker. On the downside, I didn't fancy using any themes and did it all myself which = extraordinary pain when you're a tech-spazzy as I am.

Old PEOWW. Bye bye, Joan.

This all came about just a couple of weeks ago when Sidekick from the PEOWW forum suggested that we add a blog of sorts (fuck... I've still got to do that). I'd been playing around with content management systems (namely Joomla) and it was making me cry constantly. The blog thing got me onto Wordpress and I was able to whip up a site pretty quickly.

Making it look like PEOWW took the most time. It kind of does, yes? Especially when the eagle-eyed among you spot which famous celebrity I've snuck onto the front page. We spent a week adding old reviews and features to the site (have done 70, only 130ish to go... it'd be more but I'm trying to max Skate 2) and then the IMMENSE PANIC of realising that whilst it looked good in Firefox, the whole site was FUCK-O in Internet Explorer. Hngggggggg!

Still, fixed it (well not really but came up with a clever way to mask the fuck up using lovely colours... heeeeee!) and was able to launch yesterday. Oh and then I broke all the links when I changed the url to www.peoww.co.uk rather than the temp WP directory. Oh and I seem to have fucked some of staff log-ins up.

So that's the story of PEOWW 2. Ooooh.

Still plenty to add and new stuff on the way. Once we add all the old pieces and I risk playing around in the code again, we'll be looking good.

Editorially (editLOLiaLOLy) I've made a couple of decisions. One was to drop the score in our first ever review (Space Giraffe) because the patch made things too difficult. The second was to do a complete rewrite of one review because I'd spent so much time with the game and wanted to add some extra perspective.

Oh and you can now leave comments on the reviews and ting. Which is neat-o.

Check it all out on www.peoww.co.uk!

Kai Review: Skate 2 (360)

2009-02-02T01:56:00.000-08:00

No-thrills sequel to the best sports game of 2007. Same controls, same gameplay. Slightly better graphics. Online modes have been fleshed out a bit. Nothing too exciting but a reasonably good sequel.

Man with bad haircut skating at you.

Kai Review: Prince of Persia (360)

2009-02-02T01:36:00.000-08:00

Pretty but dull platformer that seems to lack the finesse and depth of Assassin's Creed, a game it shares an engine with and, yes, AssCreed wasn't even very good. Lacklustre free-running and awful combat make this game a bit of an irrelevance. Plot is bollocks too.

Man hanging off of wall.

On yer bike.

2008-12-22T05:01:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-19T05:18:00.000-08:00

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)

2008-12-18T08:08:00.000-08:00

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)

2008-12-18T06:27:00.000-08:00

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)

2008-12-18T03:00:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-18T01:31:00.000-08:00

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)

2008-12-18T01:18:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-17T04:39:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-15T12:19:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-09T03:34:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-09T02:28:00.000-08:00

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.