Fortyseven

I installed it a couple days ago but didn't get around to trying it until tonight.

My first reaction: absolutely beautiful game. Love the styling. But then I started playing, and it's the kind of game where if I play like I'm used to, I'll spin out of control and slam into shit.

I was about to give up. But then I slowly got the 'feel' after about 10 tries, and once I got control, I ended up in 1st place. Felt great.

I'm impressed enough with the entire package of audio/visual/gameplay that I might consider snagging it. (Mind you, I don't play too many racing games, so if there's a better one out there, I'm easily ignorant of it.)

I remember renting 'Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa' from a local independent video store back when businesses still did such things as "rent NES games"... it was a powder-blue (I believe) Famicom cartridge with an adapter on the end. It was labeled "Mario Baby". I had no idea, of course, except that it was Japanese and for all I knew back then it really WAS an unannounced Mario game to be eventually ported over. The latest Japanese gaming news, at the time, was pretty rare... ;)

Why would it have to fail, necessarily? 'Prey' turned out pretty good, despite the development hell it went through.

That said, I'm pretty sure saying "when it's done" isn't cute anymore. Not after all this time, at least. Being able to get away with saying that was bought with the good-will earned by their excellent efforts with Duke 3D, and the BUILD-based titles that followed it.

But that bank account of Cool ran dry a long time ago.

I think that teaser video, fun as it was for us, really should have waited until they were confident and far along enough to specify a launch window.

Without knowing what their ACTUAL plans are, maybe it made sense for them to release it. From an outsiders point of view, though, without something concrete following it...well, with each passing month it quickly looks like it was just 3DR waving it's dick around again, like they did with the parade of obsolete videos showing off the game at past E3's.

I want to believe.

The game design was a great match for the DS, because of the touch screen. I don't see it translating nearly so well on the Wii... the Wiimote is kind of like a "mouse", sure, but just imagine drawing on the screen with any kind of accuracy.

Then again, perhaps they found a way to make it work. I'm curious, at least. ;)

If you seriously believe adding the ability to jump in a 2D Bionic Commando game is a good idea, then you have missed the entire point of it.

It /wasn't/ a standard platformer. The whole IDEA was to use the grapple to get around. If that concept doesn't work for you, that's fine, there's an entire universe of traditional platform games where almost all of them feature the ability to show off that Nike-assisted vertical leap.

Bionic Commando did the whole platform thing /different/, which is why it had a certain appeal.

It's like saying, "Gosh, 'Tetris' would be so much better if the pieces didn't fall from the sky increasingly faster and if I could move pieces that I'd already placed so I could get them all lined up nicely. Instead, I'm left with large holes in my pile and it's just inconvenient!"

C'mon. :P

Don't blame the Wii for someones choice to use shitty (non-filtered, no less) sprites made with what looks like a camcorder. It looks like an arcade title made in 1996 that got shelved for 10 years. I'm pretty sure, (based exclusively on these shots alone), that it would look almost exactly the same regardless of what platform it was on: garbage. The N64 could probably handle that with ease, all by itself. :P

The Wii deserves better than to be used as a third-party gaming landfill who's sole reason for living is to serve as a receptacle for first-party exclusives.

I'm running Crysis on an Athlon 64 X2 5600, and a Radeon X1300 that I borrowed from work, at 800x600 with everything set low, except textures (medium).

It looks...not too shabby. Seriously. And it runs pretty good. Far better than I'd have expected.

I mean, I know it can look a hundred times better, but I'm enjoying it regardless.

(Waiting for a back-ordered GeForce 8800GT to arrive soon. I'll start the game over. :) I'm not /completely/ crazy, damn it.)

Anyway, since when do PC gamers not buy a game because of hefty requirements? I thought upgrading for the latest pixel-slut was the law of the land? :)

Indeed. DX2 was fun in and of itself, but it broke my heart with those XBoxisms, when compared to the first game.

Vegas Stakes was pretty slick.

I still sometimes make the "doodle-doo-doooo" noise that the game did when something bad happens.

While that might seem like a useless bit of personal trivia, what I mean by it is that the game left an impression 10+ years after having first played it.

If I was in the unfortunate situation of being forced to play a casino game, I could definitely do worse than it. :P

I'm finding as I hit about 45 stars that there's some real moments where I was going "WOOHOO!! YEAH!" when I'd finally get to a star. Some REALLY challenging hair-pulling stuff, especially once you hit the green star-based galaxies.