Neo Geo Battle Coliseum (Xbox 360)

Finally, a new SNK release with netcode that isn't terrible! I played through arcade mode several times and fought all the different bosses, but online has been where the real fun is. My team usually consists of Mr. Karate and then any of the following: Iori, Mai, Robert, Terry or Haohmaru.

Whilst the online mode is good, the online community was a bit surprising -usually people who play SNK games are nice enough but I've encountered several rage quitters, such as jeremierock (twice), BENIMARU N AdvancedTay, Taurero and NGW Unreal. I iMpuLZe xX came close to winning the idiot award this month, as he not only rage quit but also sent me some hate mail. I happened to play him again a few days later and you guessed it, another rage quit.

But I'm prepared to forgive them all as nothing compares to the idiocy of Brye2357.




Star Wars The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360)

Completed on easy, medium and hard difficulty. There is only one difficulty left for me to beat this on (Sith master or something like that). The problem this has it that you can usually just not bother fighting enemies so you can pretty much just waltz through the game. And if there are a group of enemies in the way, a quick abuse of force powers can scatter just about anything in a second. By the time they recover, I'd gotten past them. I encountered a few glitches, such as characters falling through the floor (I had to reset the game at one point due to a boss vanishing) and some clipping issues. I might beat it on the hardest difficulty just so I've cleared them all.









Doom II (Xbox 360)

I finished the game on the Ultra Violence difficulty. There were a few levels I got a little lost in but my main annoyance was how many of the later levels seemed to be just spamming as many enemies as possible. I really hate some of the new enemies in this, especially the one in the picture which vomits flaming skulls at you constantly.

I then started the 360 exclusive levels, which again seemed to enjoy shoving as many enemies onto the screen. I beat them all aside from the hidden one, which I haven't found how to get to yet. The last level was surprisingly easy, with just one cyber demon and a lot of imps.








Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360)

I beat all the campaigns on expert thanks to the "Last Man on Earth" mutation. Every week, a new "mutation" is put up which is a unique game play mode and this one removed all the zombies and left a single player taking on all of the special infected types. It was nerve wrecking in places, especially with stuff like the smokers and tanks lying in wait, but I did it and got the achievement.

I also managed to get the "Real Deal" achievement a week later. For that you need to beat a campaign on expert under the "realism" game mode, which is even tougher than usual as there are no survivor respawns and it is much more difficult to keep track of the other players with you. We managed to do it on The Passing campaign, surprisingly it didn't take that long.







Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 (Xbox 360)

So according to my Xbox stats I hadn't played this game for over half a year. I start it up and a patch downloads. I thought this must be a good thing as hopefully the patch would fix the many online issues and remove the crashing glitch and the problems with some of the backgrounds. But no, nearly a year on since the initial release this port is still terrible. I tried playing online only to be met with horrendous levels of lag in most matches, with character teleporting all over the screen in a choppy manner. My second match had a rage quitter: BLACK JE5US 5. I had to reset my Xbox at one point due to that glitch where the game has a network error when trying to start an online match. Will Capcom ever fix this game?

And then there is also the matter of the people who play this. JiRaYASaGemOdE, for example, was screaming expletives down his mic at me for the entire match, even though he was winning and even beat me. I also don't like it when, when an opponent beats me, they hit start to regain control of their character and start teabagging my fighter. If teabagging has to exist in video games, let's leave it in Halo, OK?




Metal Slug Anthology (PSP)

I played through all of the games on here. The original Metal Slug always was my favourite and it still is after playing this. Metal Slug 2 was bad -I know the original suffered from slow down but it seemed really bad in this version. I hope one day that SNK fix the game and remove the slow down as it had some bosses that were changed for Metal Slug X. MSX was good, but I really hated the tedious part in the fifth level where you have to try and shoot down several trains coming at you. Metal Slug 3 was also good but I kind of wish that the game had more of the green soldiers attacking you as most of the enemies in it are strange creatures such as zombies, killer plants and giant enemy crabs. Metal Slug 4 was the worst one, with reused backgrounds and unbalanced bosses. Metal Slug 5 was a game I was a little too harsh on in the past as I enjoyed playing through it here. It was kind of a return to roots for the series as all the silly extras like zombies and fat characters were removed, and the enemies were a new human army with tanks and the like. I haven't played through Metal Slug 6 yet.