There’s something about the Final Fantasy series of games that has always interested me yet the gameplay does not always hold my interest for long enough. At times it can be repetitive or frustrating to the point where I don’t enjoy it any more. This was definitely the case when I gave some of the early games another go a couple of years ago after they were re-released on Nintendo DS with updated graphics. Read more…
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Scott Pilgrim comes to PSN and XBox Live and Lee shares his initial impressions on the comic book/film game on the PS3...
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Lee writes about his experience with EB Games and eBay when trying to get rid of his PS2 game collection and the three games that replaced them!
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Lee has been playing the game Far Cry 2 for what seems like forever and shares his thoughts on the first person shooter.
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Greg starts playing the latest Transformers game and, as expected, it's completely rubbi-... wait a minute! This is really fun!
First impressions: Final Fantasy XIII
Uncharted 1 after Uncharted 2
I finally found it at a reasonable price, so I bought Uncharted. The catch, however, is that I already played and completed Uncharted 2 late last year. Considering the number of times Uncharted 2 was declared “Game Of The Year” for 2009, was I going to be disappointed by Uncharted?
What must not be forgotten is that just as Uncharted 2, timed along with the release of the PS3 Slim, re-invigorated the PS3 platform, Uncharted proved to gamers and game developers what was possible with the platform (apparently Uncharted only uses one-third of the PS3′s capabilities). Read more…
First Impressions: Street Fighter IV
It’s been a long time since I visited the world of Street Fighter.
Street Fighter 2 on the Super Nintendo actually. Since then there have been a bunch of versions of SF2 and I imagine Street Fighter III though I don’t recall seeing anything about it. But then I saw a demo of the current one Street Fighter IV and was very impressed with the graphics.
So then I saw it for a pretty awesome price, took 20 minutes away from Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, which I might add I’ve been becoming more obsessed with every minute I play it. Read more…
Poseidon is a jerk and Gaia is mean
After my initial return to the world of Kratos I’ve pretty much dropped everything else to stat playing this in the three or four minutes I have spare each day. Whilst fleeting those minutes are full of bloody awesomeness and innovative use of the PS3 controller to kill people.
The story goes like this, the Titans are mounting an assault on Olympus and are all climbing up the sheer cliffs of the mountain. In HD it looks fantastic and the rumble in the controller adds to the overall effect of the sequences. You as Kratos are climbing up the back of Gaia helping her shake off the weird crab horse water thingies that keep impaling her. Read more…
First impressions: God of War 3
The measure of a man is what he does with power…
It’s been a while since I played the first two God of War games on the PS2. I loved those games because they were so well put together, I liked characters and the action was great. I didn’t bother picking up the God of War collection for the PS3, even with better graphics I’ve already finished them, they’re done. God of War 3 arrived in the mail today.
Welcome home. Read more…
Bioshock and family
In my last Bioshock game progress post, I touched on the topic of family.
Your family
In the very first scene of the game’s opening cinematic, the main character, Jack, opens a present addressed to him “With Love, from Mom + Dad”. As he does this, he says: ”They told me, ‘Son, you’re special. You were born to do great things.’ You know what? They were right.” Read more…
First impressions – Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
As I mentioned last week in the first Mashing Buttons podcast…
What’s that?
You haven’t listened to it yet!?
You should go rectify that, all the cool kids are listening to it.
…as I was saying I mentioned in the podcast that one of my favourite gaming genres right now is first person war/battle games such as Modern Warfare 2 or Killzone 2. So I’ve picked myself up a couple of other war games including Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising which I finally got around to giving a quite run last night. Read more…
PS3 game audit or Why I should hold off buying more games
I thought it might be a good idea to organise my PS3 games as I’ve been picking them up here and there and not having enough time to play them straight away have forgotten that I have some of them.
It’s something that I’d like to be reminded of when the next big game comes along and frankly my budget won’t stretch that far.
Also I’m sure this is riveting stuff and gives an insight to my character
- James Cameron’s Avatar – played about 20 mins of this, couldn’t get 3D working, got distracted haven’t played it since.
- Batman: Arkam Asylum – Finished this a while back, really loved it, only played for a couple of minutes to get the feel of it and got hooked completely.
- Flashpoint: Dragon Rising – Haven’t played this yet, looking forward to some more combat
- MotorStorm – the racing game I’ve been looking for! It’s just a lot of white knuckle mud bashing fun.
- Killzone 2 – loved part one so was really looking forward to the sequel, not as much fun as the first because you are stuck with the one character but still an awesome warfare game.
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – Completely hooked on this game, it is just so much fun and I finished it in a couple of days, planning on heading back in to play harder levels.
- Modern Warfare 2 – Everything I possibly could have hoped from a sequel.
- Resistance: Fall of man – haven’t played yet
- Resistance 2 – haven’t played yet
- Hellboy: The Science of Evil – played about ten minutes of it when I first got it and put it aside in the hopes to give it some proper attention, just haven’t gotten around to it. The game itself was great for the limited play I did.
- SingStar: Various – I’m not going to list these separately they are all great – love them, especially Queen.
- Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune – loved this game, loved the story, hated the mutants.
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – have only played around half an hour but impressed with what I’ve seen so far.
- Beatles Rockband – brilliant game, don’t play it nearly as much as we should. Have played quite a few hours with Tracey, Greg and Teresa.
- Fallout 3 – played the first two plus the spin off and was very keen to revisit the vault, I played for a little while and realised how big the game was going to be so abandoned it for the time being.
- Unreal Tournament 3 – I was a huge fan and constant player of UT2004 and then my PC couldn’t play UT3 well so I stopped playing as the servers dried up. I really feel comfortable with the Unreal engine and the gameplay so when I found this cheap I snapped it up. Haven’t had a huge chance to play it though I played online for a little bit and was impressed with the expanded maps.
- Bioshock – amazing game. Terrifying but super interesting plot.
- NHL10 – I love this game, played through to the Stanley Cup and now am taking a bit of break to play all these other games (although I plan on keeping my skillset up with some online play).
- Borderlands – Tracey actually picked this up as a game we could play together as she heard really good things and wanted to see what a first person shooter was like. Then we stopped playing playing just as we were getting semi-good at it.
- Conan – haven’t opened it yet, got it really cheap.
- Ghostbusters – one of the reasons why I bought the PS3 in the first place. Wary of playing it as I have this weird idea of wanting to prolong the experience, I keep circling it but have yet to commit. The game looks perfect.
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine – this looks really good and I’ve heard good things, just haven’t had the chance to play it yet.
- NHL2K10 – completely different style of play compared to NHL10 which I prefer. I’ll probably eBay this one off very soon.
- Sega Rally – another for the eBay heap, just didn’t enjoy it and I know I won’t play it again.
- Haze – heard bad things, got it really cheap, haven’t had the chance to play it yet.
- Lost – based on the genius television series I got this for amazingly little cost, all of $9! I just want to run around the island for a little while so my expectations are really small, yet to load it up though.
- Tomb Raider: Underworld – Had this on the Wii, heard really bad things and stories about bugs in the Wii version so I picked this up really cheap and sold the Wii version. Haven’t played it yet.
- Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe – it’s just a fun mashing buttons style game, finished it on the DC side, not sure if I care about the MK side of things.
- Far Cry 2 – I’ve read good things, seen good reviews just another game that I haven’t had a chance to play yet.
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots – I saw this really cheap and wanted to check out all the Metal Gear Solid fuss, yet to play it.
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 – nearly bought this for the PS2 and glad I held off. This is a fun game but wasn’t that much of an improvement over the first version.
- AC/DC Live – came with our Rockband gear, playing Thunderstruck is a real joy.
Hair today, Stanley Cup winner tomorrow
Some people questioned the reasoning behind adjusting my hair to resemble my avatar in NHL10.
Some people suggested it would be easier to change the avatar to resemble me.
Some people thought that it would make no difference.
To those doubters I give you this:
Yes that’s right in a marathon Good Friday hockey session I finally brought the end of the season to a close with an edge of your seat final game. The final win wasn’t without controversy either in the play-off first round because the simulate season button is confusing when you finish a season and gives you no information on how to proceed I ended up losing two simulated games before I realised what was happening.
Now you may say that there is no “I” in team but I will remind you that there are 3 I’s in “individual awesomeness”.
For those of you (like myself until about five minutes ago) who are unfamiliar with ice hockey outside of The Mighty Ducks franchise of films:
The Conn Smythe Trophy is awarded annually to the player judged most valuable to his team during the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup playoffs. The Conn Smythe Trophy has been awarded 44 times to 38 players since the 1964–65 NHL season. Each year, at the conclusion of the final game of the Stanley Cup finals, members of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association vote to elect the player deserving of the trophy. The trophy is handed out prior to the presentation of the Stanley Cup by the NHL commissioner. source
I think this screen is possibly my biggest vindication, finally my hot’ness has been recognised by a video game.
So there you have it. Obviously not attempting to carve your avatar into your image instead opting to emulate their look in real life is a sound plan for video game ice hockey success.
I highly recommend it.
Introducing the Mashing Buttons Podcast!
In an attempt to bring variety to the Mashing Buttons blog Greg and I have recorded the first podcast for the blog. I think we felt it was a natural extension of the site because Mashing Buttons was born out of gaming conversations.
It’s the first one so it is exceedingly long and after the first half an hour I stopped being so precious with the editing, so judge this solely as a pilot episode and next fortnight we should have things tightened up a little.
Podcast notes:
- Introduction
- What have we been playing
- Bioshock
- God of War
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
- NHL10
- We Rule
- In the news
- PS Move
- Black Wii
- PS3 OS
- What’s your favourite game genre?
- What are we hoping to play over the next fortnight?
- NHL10
- Ghostbusters
- Killzone 2
The music track at the start is Bitter Bleeps by Mini Roc



