So I just got done beating the last boss... wow. I can't believe they pulled that on the last boss, I literally can't believe it. That was an awesome pay off, especially since I have mad love for punch out. Some of the dialogue throughout the battle was simply brilliant, "I will crush you" and 'Splosion Man's random jibberish at the end, all with the retro punch out style portraits. It was really crazy and totally unexpected. The only downfall is it made the last boss the quickest and easiest to beat, in my opinion anyway. Perhaps it would have been better with two rounds of punch out action and then standard splode mechanics to take her down, for more of a huge explosion at the end.
The wedding afterwards was pretty good but I was already ready for it and it can't stand up to the original ending, it was still quite enjoyable though. I must say I enjoyed the part where the costumed Splosion Man and Ms. Splosion Man riding off on a motorcycle while Major Nelson's head flew at the screen and exploded. I noticed in the credits that they had a lot of their family members as extra's in the church scene which is pretty rad, also Alex got thanked in the credits.
Overall I thought the game was really fun with only one or two bad parts and definitely worth the 800 points, I can't wait to blast through the multiplayer and try going for that hardcore mode achievement. Truth be told I never did finish the original on hardcore I did manage to make it to near the end of the third world though, I might juggle the two while I try and S-Rank them both. So what did you think of the ending?
So perhaps the most noticeable change in the sequel is that you do not take control of the enigmatic loony Splosion Man and instead take control of a brand new character, she is a lady. You can tell because she wears a bow. I was a little worried about taking control of Ms. Splosion Man after watching one of the preview trailers for the game, her quoting of bands like the spice girls and obsession with shoes seemed like it could get a little, tiresome and annoying. Splosion Man had the sort of inane chatter that brought the character to life and really gave him a lot of character it perhaps seemed they were just trying to get some cheap laughs here. Well after playing the demo I am a lot more confident that me and Ms. Splosion Man can be friends, she is just as insane as Splosion Man and has a myriad of different animations and chatters along mindlessly just like Splosion Man. The quotes are rare just like the original and she will often just chant "la la la la la la la" while your waltz through the levels. Instead of a mad desire to eat cake, Ms. Splosion Man has a hunger for shoes (she has to think of her figure) a nice touch is that when she collects the shoes she will actually wear them until the end of the level and though it is only a beta all the levels had a different pair of shoes for her to wear. The only real issue I have with the character and this might be a debatable use of the term "real issue", is that her face is weird. Not sexy.
Has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful eyes?
Single Player
The single player begins with all the scientists capturing Splosion Man by luring him into a cage with a giant cake and lets face it, that's happened to us all at some point. During the celebration Ms. Splosion is created after champagne is spilled on some machiney and the electrical current flows into a bow in the middle of some scieney looking platform. The game kicks in from the title screen and having played Splosion Man recently I can say that Ms. Splosion Man looks notably better graphically though it still keeps the same unique style. A lot of the textures have been re-skinned with the barrels and platforms having a slight change in appearance and you can now see clouds and sunlight outside of the windows instead of space probably since you will be going outside of the laboratory on several occasions, how dare they mess with the rich tapestry that is the Splosion Man lore! So the game immediatly hits you with a tutorial that I have to admit, is pretty brilliant. It gives you the basics of the game by showing you how to or how not to do things, with your pink character model "Sarah" doing the tasks flawlessly and being praised while the orange character model "Debbie" is berated and killed for failing repeatedly. The first level is mainly more of the same apart from one main new feature which is these new rails which you can slide on and fling yourself off, you also fight a boss battle at the end which was a little uninspired and mainly an excuse to bust you out of the lab. After this there is a little bit of outside gameplay, you jump from car to car using them as platforms and there is some Donkey Kong style launching from barrel to barrel, you travel through the open world back into the lab and so forth. Personally while I thought the outside sections were ok I much prefer just being in the lab on a fiendishly designed level, I personally never really tired of running through the labratories in the first game. When I was outside I found myself sometimes losing my character in the pink clouds and you totally just die if you hit a wall you are not supposed to hit just because that is not the right way, funny that letting you out into the world should take away from your feeling of freedom. For saying this is the start of the game it is definitely a lot more challenging off the bat than the original Splosion Man was, which is fine by me but perhaps might put off some newcomers to the franchise. Also new is a Super Mario World style overworld map which doesn't do much for me because I am not going to skip everything and play every level, so yeah. Overall I am hopeful that I will have just as much fun with Ms. Splosion Man as I did the original because if twisted pixel knows how to do one thing, it's make funny FMV videos but if it knows how to do a second thing, it's design fun Splosion Man levels.
Multiplayer
The first thing I have to get off my chest about multiplayer, player one is the pink model. I am used to playing as the orange model in normal Splosion Man, which is the color of the second player model, this lead to mass confusion for my simple brain. The multiplayer is much the same as in the original which is to say, extremely difficult if you have a douche for a partner/partners. In the same room these levels were doable quite easily and we grabbed the shoes on both levels, I am not sure it would go quite so swimmingly over Xbox Live. A few new features they showed was a new platform raising system which was fairly difficult to use if you did not co-ordinate well with your partner, a new glowing ball thingy that you have to bounce around into holes to open doors and whatnot which was also fairly difficult to get to do what you wanted and some F-Zero like purple strips that let you have unlimited splodes. Unlimited Splodes! The multiplayer seems to be dependent on the same thing as the first game, good co-op partners and if you can't get that then at least be in the same room, which works out nicely for me.
Twisted Pixel have jammed some tasty extras into the game.
Extras
On top of everything else Twisted Pixel has gone the extra mile and added some more extensive leaderboards letting you track a multitude of things, a new gallery section where you can unlock audio files, art and videos in a similar way to you did in comic jumper. This now means that you collect coins based on your performance on levels which I don't really care for but I suppose that is the only way that you can do it and I am hype for some hilarious videos. You may have heard there is a new mode called two girls one controller, I personally think this is completely pointless but maybe someone will find a use for it? There is also a new ghost feature allowing you to rip ghost data from the leaderboards or of your own runs which could be interesting, as far as I could tell you couldn't test it out in the beta. Looking at the achievements secret exits are hinted at, what could this mean? Also there is totally an achievement for completing hardcore mode again. God damn it.
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Recently I have been thinking a lot about Pokémon Snap, like I assume most people in the world do and I really think/hope that we could finally see a sequel announced at E3 this year. I never really understood why there was never a sequel to this game, it did OK commercially and critically, they have sequels for just about every other Pokémon ever and in my opinion it is probably the best spin off game that the franchise has spawned. The 3DS owners are waiting for some games to get excited about so we should be hearing about a lot of new titles from Nintendo's big franchises this year. With the recent release of the Pokédex 3D the latest generation all already have models generated so they could potentially release a Pokémon Snap 3DS using the 3D models that they have already put in the work completing.
Todd Snap is the man I think that the 3DS really is the perfect handheld for Pokémon Snap, you could shout into the mic to get the attention of the Pokémon and they could have a separate mode where all the Pokémon are generated in augmented reality. Walking around my house snapping Pokémon would blow my mind, it's like something you would imagine yourself doing when you was a kid! Really I would prefer it if they did a true sequel and just included like 100 something 1st and 2nd generation Pokémon but I think that really is wishful thinking. All I know is two games I am waiting for on the 3DS is Animal Crossing 3DS and a new Pokémon Snap game, damn I feel manly.
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Bas Rutten Commentary! So after taking a years break THQ has gone ahead and announced UFC Undisputed 3 for release on January 3 2012 and it sounds like they are going big with it. A roster of over 150 fighters, brand new bantamweight and featherweight divisions for the first time ever in an MMA game and perhaps most exciting of all a PRIDE mode! The new PRIDE mode allows you to fight in traditional PRIDE events and utilize their rules set where you can do all kinds of crazy stuff, such as kick dudes in the head while they are on the ground. Perhaps best of all, the classic PRIDE announce team, Bas Rutten and Stephen Quadros have provided their voices for the game. Also customizable entrances should hopefully really allow us to recreate some of the crazy walkouts seen by the likes of Kazushi Sakuraba. THQ also talked about including a new simplified control mode ala Marvel VS Capcom 3, not so sure how I feel about that but much like simple mode on MVC3 it will just probably end up and unused feature. Now there is nothing left to do but wait for the sizeable roster to leak out (especially exciting now that the UFC owns Strikeforce) and for THQ to give us a look at the gameplay since apparently their is a drastic change in the submission system..... again. PRIDE is back baby. 14 Comments
So this card was originally one of my most anticipated of the whole year with the main event re-match of what's probably my fight of the year between Edgar and Maynard and Rampage in an exciting match up with an aggressive heavy hitter in Thiago Silva I was really expecting some fireworks. Unfortunately Thiago Silva was involved in steroids controversy and was replaced by the less exciting, wrestling based Matt Hamill. To make matter's worse Edgar and Hammil both had to pull out with injuries and there was no replacement main event with Rampage/Hammil getting promoted to the top slot. All being said the night of fights as a whole looks pretty solid with Thiago Alves in action against the highly legit Rick Story and a heavyweight pairing of Frank Mir and Roy Nelson. Anyway I thought I would do a quick break down for the main and co-main event and then just pick who I think will win for the rest of the match ups. Feel free to weigh in with your own predictions or come and berate me afterwards if I am completely off the mark.
Rampage vs Hamill
In my opinion Hamill is out of his depth here, he does possess some power in his hands but he Rampage has always had an amazing chin and the way Hamill wings his punches is perfect for Rampage to counter on the feet. Hamill's best chance in this match it to take Rampage down and keep him there but that is easier said than done, Rampage is very strong and has great wrestling himself, I know Rashad took him down a whole bunch but that was due to his speed and explosiveness which is not something Hamill has quite so much of. When Rampage is in shape and taking a fight seriously there are few fighters in the world that can beat him, I do not believe Hamill is at his level yet. I see Hamill starting on the feet looking for take-downs and being denied, he will then end up getting drawn into Page's style of fight and end up paying for it with a heavy shot.
Rampage by KO, round 2.
Mir vs Nelson
Frank Mir and Big Country are very evenly matched both the Vegas boys have black belts, good technical stand up and a whole lot of big fight experience. Despite his shape, Roy Nelson should not be underestimated, he even managed to defeat Frank by points in a grappling tournament many years ago. Roy comes into this fight very hungry for the win and in my opinion (though it may be hard to believe) he is better conditioned than Frank Mir. I see most of the fight staying on the feet, and I don't believe Frank has the power to drop him, Roy took massive bombs from Junior Dos Santos and still managed to survive which no-one else has done. I can see Roy getting a take-down early in the third, manoeuvring into position and finish Mir off with some big bombs.
Roy by TKO, round 3.
Now for some quick picks, I have highlighted in bold who I think will win. Struve vs Brown Story vs Alves - (Story is the perfect fighter to beat Alves, but if Alves is at his best and keeps it on the feet he could end up knocking Rick out.) Santiago vs Stann - (Might by fight of the night) Torres vs Johnson Boetsch vs Grove Tibau vs Oliveira Cariaso vs McDonald 3 Comments
Hey guys, just thought I would hit you with my predictions and a quick breakdown for the three main fights for UFC 127 this weekend, agree or disagree let me know!
Penn vs Fitch
Man this is probably the hardest fight on the card to pick. BJ possesses the natural talent to be a threat to just about anybody at welterweight and in my opinion is the greatest lightweight of all time, but Fitch just seems like the perfect fighter to beat him. The way I see it Fitch is the bigger better wrestler, has excellent black belt submission defense, has unquestionable cardio and heart and is a very smart fighter with a good chin. After seeing BJ controlled and outwrestled by Frankie in there second fight my faith in his unbelievable takedown defence is in doubt and it is practically impossible to sub Fitch in a mma bout. BJ’s only hope is to land a Hail Mary knockout or put on the performance off his life by stuffing all the takedowns and beating Fitch up on the feat. Unfortunately I see Fitch using tentative strikes to set up takedowns and then just grinding and controlling BJ for the duration of the fight. UD for Fitch.
Bisping vs Rivera
This is certainly the fight that has had the most hype with Rivera doing all he can to make it personal with his online videos insulting Bisping, I can only assume this is a ploy to draw Bisping into a wild firefight with Rivera. If Bisping does decide to throw caution to the wind and slug it out with Rivera it would be a very stupid thing to do because that is the only way that I can possibly see him losing this fight. Bisping needs to keep his head and he will surely out strike, frustrate and eventually wear down Rivera at which point he will be able to score a takedown and finish him with his underrated ground and pound abilities. Bisping by TKO round 2
Siver vs Sotoropoulis
This fight is a complete mismatch if you ask me and I don’t know what Siver did to deserve this match-up, Sotiropoulos is in the mix for the title. Though Siver has solid wrestling he defiantly does not compare to Sotiropoulis in the grappling department and I can see George getting subs from the top or the bottom. Siver is a good striker but I don’t think he even has the advantage there, Ross Pearson clearly outstruck Siver in their fight I think George will use his reach and outstrike Siver for as long as it stays on the feet. When this fight eventually hits the mat its as good as done. Sotiropoulos by Submission round 1.
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