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Aw man, I went and did it again didn't I? Forgetting to post and shit*. It was only like three months this time though, cut me some slack. I'm just going to summarize what I've been playing since we last met.

I'll start with Mortal Kombat, and my god is it special. In terms of a simple, one-on-one fighting game judged solely on gameplay and balance and all that, Super Street Fighter IV is still it's superior, but MK is so much more than that. There's the wonderfully in-depth story mode that takes you through the opening chapters of the saga rewritten by an enlightened Raiden trying to change the future that once was, there's the challenge tower featuring 300 battles with varying parameters (some of which can bring a grown man to tears) and the excellent King of the Hill mode, an online winner-stays-on fight with audience participation for those not currently playing. I could write about it all day, but I won't for your sake.

I'll rope Killzone 3 and Bulletstorm into one paragraph, because the two are intrinsically linked for me, having been bought on the same day and played parallel to each other. Bulletstorm came as a bit of a surprise to me, I bought it on a whim, and it turned out to be absolutely sublime. The carnage you able to, and are indeed encouraged to achieve keeps the adrenaline pumping and as a result keeps the game running at a wild pace without it ever getting boring. And on top of that, the voice acting is fantastic, the script is hilarious and you actually care for the characters, despite them being stereotypical meat head space marines. And Killzone 3 is the exact opposite. Everything great about Killzone 2 is gone, and is replaced by a borderline homoerotic excuse for a storyline and awkward attempts at Uncharted-style humour. It's by no means a bad game, but even though the campaign clocks out after three and a half hours, I was ready for it to end.

LA Noire came and went, and despite the universally positive reviews it just failed to impress me. While cruising the mean streets of 1940's Los Angeles I even began to question myself, thinking that I was missing something, because surely all of those reviewers can't be wrong, but the game just doesn't work, and I can't praise a game for what it wants to be; Two Worlds wanted to be Oblivion, and it ended up being dung. No, LA Noire does not work at all. Take the crime scene investigations; on an early case I went to question a witness before I checked the evidence, and ended up asking him how he was linked to the missing person (that the case was built around) by name, despite not having discovered his ID and learning his name for myself yet. On a later case I found a popcorn carton with a vial of illegal morphine taped to the bottom of it, travelled to the vendor, found the cartons, the morphene and even the tape in his stall, yet was unable to bring this up while interrogating him.

The interrogations are littered with faults like this, you could have a signed photo of the killer performing the act and fail a section because it wasn't the specific piece of evidence the game was looking for right there. And when you do do something wrong, there's no explanation why. I was on the receiving end of a bollocking from my chief at one bit because I arrested the wrong guy, and it took place right outside the door of the interrogation room that I'd just made the arrest in! Firstly, if you knew it was the other guy, why didn't you make the fucking arrest, and secondly, they aren't even in cuffs yet, it isn't too late! Gah. And again, I wasn't told why it was the wrong guy. It's so frustrating. The driving, shooting and fisticuffs are alright, but they should be, they are just stolen from GTAIV, but even though you can only enter a fist fight at certain events, and the environment becomes closed off like a fighting game, you still have to lock on with the L2 button before you can throw a punch, it's unnecessary. And the controls are all wrong, R2 to accelerate and R1 for the handbrake? Nah.

Duke Nukem Forever, on the other hand, received a lot of negative reviews and was actually a joy to play. By no means was it an above average shooting game in terms of running and gunning, but the game excelled in nostalgia for those of us old enough to remember it's 15 year old prequel, and is jam packed with the crude humour, pop culture references and the obligatory half-naked digital ladies of the night we've all come to expect. Duke's antics had me literally laughing out loud at times.

It is painfully obvious that this is an old game you're playing though, the gameplay is virtually prehistoric (no cover system here, folks) and the graphics are at best horrendous, but the whole look and feel of the game takes me back to games like Prey and Doom 3, both absolute classics. The texture pop-in and awful, awful load times (which happen between every death and respawn, and that happens a lot on the later stages of the game) are inexcusable though, and do mar the experience. But overall the game was just what I was hoping for, and the collector's edition was excellent too.

Finally, I owe an apology to Platinum Games. While I stand by my opinion of Bayonetta, that it's vain, sexist, ridiculous and a shit version of Devil May Cry, a shit game in it's own right, I now feel an absolute arsehole for letting that put me off playing Vanquish, which is an absolute blast from start to finish, Sure, it's only four hours long, but it's four hours of action, adrenaline and testosterone. Simply brilliant. And none of that Solid Snake smoking-is-dangerous-please-put-your-cigarettes-in-an-ash-tray health crap either - Sam, Vanquish's protagonist, actually has a smoking button, and when you press it he takes a single drag and then discards the cigarette over his shoulder nonchalantly, only to light a new one the next time you press it. That's two fingers up to the environment, to the NHS and to the recession with one push of a button. If you press square he hosts a cock fight**.

Alright, finally finally, good luck to our Trev, who's left 24HG-UK to pursue his own blog, which I'll provide a link to when it's ready. And check out a couple of new blogs doing the rounds: the awesome 'Square Eyes. Arthritic Thumbs' and the rant-tastic Nerd Kitten that had me laughing my arse off. See you in another three months.

*I didn't actually forget to shit for 12 weeks, it's a figure of speech.
**Nah, they wouldn't get away with that. Only really hardcore M-rated games can do that. Like Pokemon.

In your bedroom at night with the lights off and your headphones on... everyone can hear you scream...

Like I said last week, I've grown tired of Fantasy RPGs of late, and felt that the well-above-average Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga deserved my attention at a time when I can bestow it fully upon the game. I even tried the simple, accessible Fable II (not a typo, I've just played Fable: The Lost Chapters and intended to play the three of them in sequence), but just couldn't muster the enthusiasm. The heroic adventures of Nobhead (descendant of Arseface) will have to wait.

All the while, the soundtrack to my RPG lethargy came in the form of The Smashing Pumpkins' whingey teen anthem 'Bullet with Butterfly Wings', a song (and band) I absolutely abhor, yet one that worms it's way into your subconscious like the T-Virus. The vessel for this song? The TV advert for Dead Space 2, a game that was so far off my radar it might as well have been Women's Murder Club or something. I've had the original Dead Space for so long, and it must be said I have never liked it, I just haven't ever gotten rid of it because of it's poor monetary value (I bought it for a tenner a couple of years ago, I'd be lucky to get £3 back on a trade-in). The reason for my disdain was the lack of positive reinforcement for your actions as a player, every little thing you did had a negative impact on the story, and every cutscene was just one of your companions telling you to go somewhere and do something, and the other, a bratty annoying bint of a woman, telling you it won't work. Then you do it, and it doesn't work.

But the TV spot for DS2 made me want the game so badly, for no reason other than that I couldn't get Billy Corgan and his group of misfitted pricks out of my head. And I felt like, as it is such a major player in the still fairly niche Survival Horror genre, I should really like it. So Divinity II took a temporary bow and my trusty 360 Elite became the subject of nightmares for a few days. And I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

Bulbasaur used Vine-Whip! It's not very effective...

Actually, that's a lie. There's this bit where you have to shoot asteroids out of the sky before they hit you, and that had me on the verge of snapping my controller in two through sheer rage. But apart from that, it was excellent. None too original (Think Half-Life's Gordon Freeman complete with Gravity Gun, fused with Silent Hill 2's James Sunderland, on board Red Dwarf, fighting Zombies, directed by Ridley Scott and you're pretty much there), but that hardly matters when you are so preoccupied with being terrified that you daren't take your finger off the aim button to press a switch. Later in the game, the developers seemed to have forgotten that the game was supposed to be scary, with the whole endgame taking place in broad daylight, but that's just cleverly there to lure you into a false sense of security before chucking the ending at you, which had everyone I've spoken to who's finished the game collectively shit their pants.

So I'm on board for DS2 now. I'll no doubt pick it up in a month or so, I was planning on getting the 360 version to continue my night terrors, but the prospect of a single disk, a free copy of Dead Space Extraction and some armour for Dragon Age II (which my wife is to purchase on the PS3), I'm being swayed to the PS3 version, but I'll see. Speaking of Dragon Age, the Archdemon finally fell last night. I've got Awakening, Witch Hunt and The Golems of Amgarrak to do before DAII, but for the minute I'm enjoying the light-hearted and simple Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Here at 24HG, if you ask us what the manliest game in the world is, chances are you'd be told Ghost Squad. Sega's Wii Shooter does have you high-five the President after rescuing him from the clutches of an evil homosexual terrorist after all. but this week it's been surpassed by... EA's girl-friendly casual gaming champion The Sims 2?

Now, Ghost Squad may be manly. But it will never be Pyramid Head, Kratos, Barry Burton and The Punisher in a Hot Tub talking about Baseball manly.

Finally, I was asked over Formspring what I have against Bayonetta. Good question. One that I will answer the next time I don't have anything better to do, like oh, go and buy Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which is what I'm going to do right now. Bye for now.

Oh we can beat them forever and ever, then we can be heroes just for one day...

Well well well!
This week the Los Angeles LA Live Complex and the TV channel 'Fiver' played host to the Spike VideoGame Awards, which I eagerly set the V+ box to record and watched like a kid at Christmas the following day (as opposed to a big kid a week before Christmas, which is how I'm doing everything else at the moment). What a fucking travesty.
The very first award was for best voice acting, and over Uncharted 2's Nolan North and Claudia Black, and the legendary Arleen Sorkin and Mark Hamill for Batman: Arkham Asylum, the winner was Jack Black. Jack. Fucking. Black.
While I can acknowledge that Brutal Legend was a widely praised game (although from what I saw the demo did nothing to back that up), and my love of metal culture does will me to play it (There have been a couple of times I've been standing in Blockbuster looking at the £25 pricetag and wondering if the wife would leave me if I brought home yet another game), Black definitely had the least noteworthy performance on the list. I guess they thought they owed him something after he presented it last year.
Another highlight was that all of the nominations for the best team sports game were EA Sports published games. It couldn't have hurt to slide Pro Evo 10 in there could it?
The rest of the show was just a bunch of celebrities awkwardly trying to be funny (I actually felt bad for Tony Hawk, especially as Ride didn't even receive a single nomination), and poorly soundchecked musical performances by Snoop Dogg (who seemed as confused as I was when they asked him to present the award for best RPG) and The Bravery, who are now my least favourite band after I had to sit and watch that prick 'play' his guitar with a violin bow. It doesn't make the music sound better, it just makes you look like a douchebag.
And, one last thing about the VGAs, how can Uncharted 2 get Game of the Year, and Assassin's Creed II get best Action/Adventure? With Uncharted 2 BEING an Action/Adventure game, surely the former cancels the latter out?
Enough VGA anger and on to the gaming.
The Conduit was great. Fuck hard in places and with a shitty ending, but great no less. Of course, had it been a PS3 or XBox 360 release it would have been mediocre, but as a Wii release it looks and plays better than just about anything else on the console.
And I finally finished Tomb Raider Anniversary too. A number of times throughout the game TRA had me wondering if I actually liked it. For every awesome platforming section there was a huge underwater puzzle or something (I've hated them since Ocarina of Time's water temple), Just there to make sure I wasn't getting too much fun out of it. Underworld is next on my agenda, but I just don't know if I want to go back into it so soon.
So I busted out Fable 2, as it's becoming tradition for me to play a Fable game over Christmas, having done so the last two years now. I'm playing as a woman, and started off doing everything the evil way but had a flash of conscience when I returned to my home in Bowerstone to find that the whole village hated me. It actually hurt. So I've decided, in seasonal Scrooge fashion, to change my ways, which is taking a fair bit of work considering I've been doing things like raiding a bandit camp, killing the bandits, finding the key to unlock their prisoners, selling the key to a slaver, killing the slaver and reclaiming the key, freeing the prisoners and then killing them as they walked home.
During my stay in Albion this year, I've been focusing a lot more on the Virtual-Life aspect of Fable 2, buying and renting out properties and making my home, raising my family, that sort of thing. I seem to have spent hours at the Blacksmith's raising money to keep my husband (I resisted the urge to be a lesbian) happy, and only really began the game proper after about four hours play. I may knock it on the head and blast through the game though, I do want to get another Mass Effect playthrough done before the end of January, and this time next week I'll have Sacred 2 to keep me occupied too. I'll be all RPGed out by February at this rate, and might finally find time to get to grips with Assassin's Creed II.
Demo preview time! Bayonetta is pretty crappy. Picture Devil May Cry, replace the albino homosexual with a leather-clad woman who likes to get naked and exchange all of the music for generic Sega awfulness and you've got it. It's not a really bad game, I just wouldn't shell out £40 for it. But then again, I'm not a fan of Devil May Cry. If you want an example of a really bad game, try out Dragonball Raging Blast. Fairytale Fights seems pretty fun, the demo is just you and a bunch of enemies but if the action is as much fun in the real game I'll be picking it up a bit later in it's shelf-life. I would love to write about LittleBigPlanet PSP and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker too, but my battery is too low to update the firmware on my PSP, even though it's plugged in. Maybe next week.
But oh! Next week is Christmas Day! I will endeavour to post next week, but I might be too drunk/asleep/busy playing Tekken 6. Such is the rock'n'roll lifestyle of a sales assistant stroke freelance games journalist (so I tell the ladies, blogger to the rest of you). Have a great Christmas regardless.
And one last thing, check out my Top 10 Games of 2009 over at VideoGameSpace, and show this up and coming little site some love. Bye!