Xbox 360
In the penultimate part the guys look at the Wii, Special Editions and Brian explains why he loved reviewing one particluar game in 2009.
Your team are Brian Ashford, Phil Harris, Tom Hillman, Murray Kendall and Josh Wilson as the other two had to leave.
Brian had just explained why Dead Space was bad on the PC in Part 2 but we'd not finished...
Shaking it up
TH: I've heard that Dead Space: Extraction is amazing.
BA: The Wii's a funny console with the occasional game that pops up that's really good and the ones that really try and shake it up and do something different like Madworld get buried because they're not that good. There's no point in going to the Wii to play a first person shooter as everything else can do it so much better but then you get some oddities like Dead Space: Extraction and House of the Dead: Overkill which are absolutely fantastic.
TH: I got Okami on the Wii for the main reason that by that point I'd sold my PS2.
BA: Was Okami released on the Wii this year?
TH: I think it was or maybe last year.
Ode to Clover
BA: That would have been a good thing for the worst games of the year as when they did it for the Wii it wasn't Clover who did it as they'd disbanded. Capcom held the rights and re-did Okami for the Wii and in the credits you only get the names of people who did the conversion. None of the names of people who did the original game are credited.
MK: That's brilliant. That's good investigative journalism. I didn't pick up on it, you did.
BA: It's the type of rubbish you find out when you spend time on forums all day. It's atrocious. It should not happen. I mean Clover are huge and they started off as Design Team Number 4 who did all the Capcom games for a while.
PH: I think you may be geeking out on us.
BA: I forget it all. I used to know all this stuff.
PH: What. You mean you don't know anymore!
BA: They made Viewtiful Joe, they made Okami, they made all these beautiful odd games for Capcom. They were the team Capcom sewt up to make new things for them they made Godhand all these crazy oddities that were actually good games. Capcom let them run with this for a while and they did some stuff that didn't quite hit the mark like PN: 03 but it still had some nice style. Capcom said you're doing what we asked you to do, creating these interesting games, the fans love you but you're not making any money so clear off.
MK: In some ways Capcom have got a point.
Good crazy
BA: Yeah. So they shut them down and they went off to form Cloverand some other games but they couldn't keep it going so that closed down and now they're Platinum but now they're making Bayonetta.
TH: Which is a crazy game.
MK: What's it like?
TH: It's like someone has just splurged everything onto a page.
MK: Is it good crazy or bad crazy?
BA: Good. You have to take out your brain and re-wire it to figure out what's going on.
TH: It's tongue in cheek.
BA: Yes it knows that it's daft and it does a whole lot of things that make no sense.
TH: Do you think it knows it's daft?
BA: I think when they actually start doing Space Harrier without hiding the fact at all they know they're being silly.
MK: Space Harrier was great.
BA: Exactly. Why don't we do Space Harrier for a level. Wouldn't that be awesome so they go and do it.
MK: It reminds me of Geoff Minter. Remember him.
BA: Oh he's still around. Did anyone play Space Giraffe.
TH: I played Space Giraffe it was good.
BA: Oh my God it sucked so bad.
MK: So Phil have we got enough for the article then. We never really covered our good points and bad points but I like the format.
Zooming in and out
BA: Well my worst game of the year has to be the Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles something of time, I forget, on the Wii.
MK: Dinosaurs of Time?
JW: Waste of Time?
BA: Echoes of Time.
MK: I would have preferred Dinosaurs of Time.
BA: I would have too that would have ultimately been a better game.
MK: As long as it wasn't Monkeys of Time.
BA: It would have still been better as this was a DS game designed for the Wii. So they decided you needed the two small screens for the Wii on a much larger medium (TV). But in trying to squeeze these two screens onto your TV they realised it didn't work so they use the plus and minus keys on the Wii Remote to zoom in and out. So when you're running around you zoom up that screen and then zoom the other when you want the menus. Which is really pointless as when you zoom it down you can't see it anymore. It's not clear enough because it's still using DS graphics.
TH: Sounds like madness.
BA: It gets worse though. When you go into the inventory screen...
MK: This is a rant you realise?
BA: Yes. Anyway when you go into the inventory it shows you the details in the other screen so you're sitting there playing this Japanese RPG and you kill a monster that drops its boots and you think, "Hey, those boots give me +1 to dodge. I wonder if they're better than what I'm wearing?" So you go into your inventory find your boots and click on them you zoom all the way back out to find out what you got. About 5 button presses to be able to read the thing. Oh no my boots are better. Zoom back to the other screen and drop them and then think what about this. Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom oh I'll change that. Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom swap that for that. Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom yeah that worked. Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom ah OK I can get on with the game. It is possible to play it but you have to be really, really determined to get through. In the end I had to give up.
PH: Same for me with Fairytale Fights.
MK: I've just realised that one game we don't want to see next year is Duke Nukem's Chess Playing Monkey Island of Terror.
PH: It would be good. It makes me think.
MK: But you know what would happen. Phil would ring me and say, "Murray. Got a great game for you."
BA: Do you know what's worse about Echoes of Time.
MK: Oh God he hasn't finished.
BA: They came up with the name for this engine to play DS games on the Wii where the remote acts as the stylus and you only have one button on the controller and they're planning to use this engine to convert lots more DS games to the Wii.
TH: Oh no!
BA: Hopefully my review will be enough for them to think SquareGo said no we won't continue but somehow I doubt it.
Strange editions
PH: The last thing I have listed is ridiculous special editions which must include Arkham Asylum. The Batarang edition. It was just a really badly moulded piece of plastic and looked unappealing. Not that I'd expect them to ship something that can actually be used as a weapon but...
BA: There's another more ridiculous special edition.
PH: You mean Modern Warfare 2?
BA: Night vision googles for £60. However my mate who really plays to get gamer points played all the way through Assassin's Creed 2 because he loved the first one.
JW: What!
PH: No Assassin's Creed 2 is good.
JW: No I meant the first one.
BA: I love it.
JW: No!
BA: We'll talk about that later. Anyway there's a limited edition version with another area in the game. It's nothing expansive it doesn't count towards gamer points or anything.
MK: Hopefully like the original Prince of Persia bonus levels where if you pick the wrong flask you die.
BA: Indeed. But the only reason to go to these rooms is it's the only way you can get 100% completion. So he gets the limited edition version and plays the extra bit and found that there isn't just one but three extra bits. The version he bought just has one there is another version which is harder to get hold of which has the second bit. The only way to get all three is to buy the balck limited edition which is limited to 5000 copies worldwide.
TH: But they'll probably just release it as DLC in 6 months time.
BA: Currently it's selling on eBay for anything from 100 to 300 dollars.
MK: Is it such a fantastic game to warrant this.
BA: It is one of the games of the year...
PH: [answering Muz] No!
BA: ...but...
Why was Brian silenced? Tune in on Thursday for the last part of The Good and Bad of 2009