I was going to ask if people were going to be picking up 1943, but after that glowing review probably not many people. I'll probably grab the trial at least.

It's not a review.

It's an issue. And it's a shame too, because from what DOES work (about 5 minutes of one match I was in) shit was fun and worked well. Granted, that was a portion of one match, of the six I played, but anyway.

I wouldn't write it off yet, but as of right this second I wouldn't even bother trialing it simply because you'll eat up your 30 minutes and not get off the fucking beach thanks to lag.

Bad Company's demo was sort of like this at first. Completely fucked up, but as time went on EA's side of the equation improved and it smoothed out.

But this needs fixing RIGHT FUCKING NOW because it is gutter trash in it's current form. Not fucking acceptable at all. I'll give them a day or two to make some last minute corrections before I write them off entirely.

Additional Spam:
Ok, so.

Let's see.

Situation seems to have changed a bit. Now it's less lag and more not getting into games period.

But when you do, it's far smoother. It took me 30 minutes to find a game to play earlier this afternoon, but after I got into the server, I stayed for a number of games, and they were pretty damn good.

They're apparently adding more servers as they go today, so maybe it won't be so bad after all.

So I've never really played a Battlefield game before, but this seemed pretty neat and everything, and I knew probably at least some of you fuckers were going to pick it up. So I download the demo this morning before I leave work, and look forward to coming home to check it out.

So now I get home, and it seems like for some people it's fine once they can get into a game, but for a ton of people they can't get into games, and it's super laggy. And now apparently people are saying (and I've seen screenshots) that they upped the price to 90,000 MS points to stop people from buying it?

Weird, I checked Marketplace online for me, and it shows 1200, but I'm seeing a lot of people (that I know) that show 90,000, I guess if you've already downloaded the demo you can still "get in"?

Might also be the marketplace via xbox.com only, that's the only screengrab I've seen of that price point.

Regardless, it's fine when/if you can get in, but it can take you upwards of half an hour to find a match to get into in the first place, and last night it was 3 second+ lag, dunno if that issue is still there.

But when it works it's quite entertaining.

People seem to be having problems getting into matches period, but people that are able to get in seem to be having zero problems with lag or anything now. Since apparently no one is around for L4D right now (which is bizarre for us for a Wednesday night) I'm about to go check it out.

I'll join you after dinner. I want to try a squad match.

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Completely unrelated to BF1943 but TMNT: Turtles In Time Re-Shelled appears to have a release date of July 22nd. Make that THREE weeks of awesome in a row.

Isn't that the same day as Marvel vs Capcom 2? Brilliant timing :(

Could be. I realize the source I used there was implying it via another source so it might be incorrect.

At this point I'm willing to retract that until I'm doubly sure.

Yeah, the site I was reading was incorrect. Turtles is not after Monkey Island. It's now in August, apparently. Oh well. I also learned that the price point is 1200, which totally turns me off. Would have been a no brainer at 800 but fuck that price point.

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Secondly, +2 refunds. Omagnus and I got a refund for the shoddy performance 1943 has shown. They've had a number of days to improve it, and after the freezing bugs from yesterday (I had three or four, he's had 5), and the fact that I can no longer connect today even though shit's "fixed" according to the news ticker, I just about had it.

I recommend anyone else who dove in do the same. The operator won't even question it. I was in and out in 8 minutes on the phone.

It probably helps that they know you by name now though Skills.

"Thank you for calling Microsoft. For technical support, press 1, for sales enquiries, please press 2, if this is Skills asking for a refund, please press 3".

:( :( :(

In other XBLA news, Worms 2 is fab. Good points are it's pretty well balanced and actually encourages using bazookas and grenades rather than all the sillier stuff that wipes out the screen, the petrol bomb is a viable weapon, online runs pretty quick and there's a ton of people playing although ranked matches are harder to find and annoying since there are a few achievements that rely on them. The single player is fun enough too. Bad points are the scenery editor is pretty weak and I don't think there's a herd of cows weapon any more. Worth the £8 or so they're asking for it though I reckon.

Actually, I find the petrol bomb to be relatively useless in this Worms. It tends to blow a small hole on impact and then concentrate all of its fire inside that tiny area instead of spreading around like before. Mad Cows have been replaced by the Buffalo of Lies for the past several Worms games. It isn't quite as handy since there's only one, but it has the same basic effect by exploding repeatedly along its path.

The landscapes are my only real problem with this game. You have very little time to flip through the randomly generated levels before the invisible timer finishes counting down and starts the game with whatever you've got at that moment. It also annoys me a little that they put airstrikes into the ranked Fort settings, but both of those are small complaints. Worms 2 Armageddon is well worth the 800 points it costs, especially considering 1200 seems to be the new typical price these days.

The petrol bomb is handy if someone is backed up in a crater I find as if you land it in front of them, the splash of fire tends to just hit underneath them meaning they slide up and down on it for the full five seconds and end up in the pit burned out by the flames afterwards. It's a shame they made the clusters from cluster bombs come out randomly, rather than with the momentum of the original shot as I'm sure they used to, as it makes chucking them with a short fuse for maximum spread of clusters (Like in a crates match when you want to blow up a shit load of stuff at once) a bit more risky and reliant on luck. The last Worms game I bought was the first 3D one and I'm sure the Buffalo thing was still a mad cow in that. It's more the herd I miss though, three of those off a ninja rope swing was my trademark attack...

Oh yeah, mad cows dropped from a ninja rope were always fun. Speaking of cluster bombs, banana bombs are also considerably less effective in this one. Rather than being utterly devastating, they tend to destroy more scenery than worms now. That may be a good thing considering how ungodly powerful they used to be, but it is a little disappointing.

I think they have tried to tone down all the bigger weapons, certainly since the first Armageddon game but then the maps are relatively much smaller. An old style Concrete Donkey would pretty much kill everything on one of the new vertical maps, although I can see it being one of those that gets me the 6 worms with one shot achievement. It's a real shame you can't specify the number of bridges and scenery items like you used to as we'd pretty much always play with two tiny bits of land at either side of the map and one or two huge bridges across the middle with the unwritten rule that whoever went first had to use a kamikaze across the bridge.

One upshot of the trend towards grenades and bazookas being more useful is that I'm winning quite a few matches as there seems to be a lot of kids who can't hit shit with either and don't know basic skills like curling a bazooka shot using the wind.

I think I said it earlier in this thread, but you can cheat for the 6 worms with one shot achievement. It counts if you go into the firing range, stack a bunch of worms on top of each other right at the edge of the water and then blow them all in. Several other weapon-based achievements count there too, like the one for using 10 Armageddons.

The problem with random matches (and the achievement tied to it) is that once someone starts losing, they quit. It shows up as a win for you on the match-up screen, but it doesn't actually count towards the achievement. There's no way anyone will get 17 wins in each category at this rate.

Really? Because I used an Armageddon in the firing range when I was going through when I first got it to see how each weapon worked now and it didn't count it on the Achievement page that tracks how many times you did each thing.

Apart from the obviously annoying "Do this in a ranked match" ones, the achievements are all pretty decent in this and the kind of things likely to crop up in general play after a while anyway. I damn near won a match with the Prod yesterday without realising that was an achievement but the guy got stuck on a tiny pixel of land and didn't fall in the water. :(

Prod is hilariously understated, I love it. You first look at it and go "Jesus, why would you EVER need a poke move?" And then all it takes is seeing a guy so... close... to... the... edge...

I will gladly spend most of my go pissing about with ninja ropes trying to reach someone to prod them into the water rather than simply shoot something at them to knock them in. Best Worms weapon ever frankly.

Wow, a Metalocalypse game is heading to XBLA and PSN.

I don't know what's more crazy...this or the South Park Tower Defense game, but I'm surprised that Konami of all companies is publishing this. Brutal.

Did anyone else here pick up 'Splosion Man this week? I hadn't really looked into it before now, but after seeing that it was made by the same people who were behind The Maw I gave the demo a go and loved it. It's basically a simple platformer where all the face buttons cause you to explode. There's even an achievement for attempting to reconfigure the controls to do something other than exploding. I've played the first five levels so far, and it's already starting to get a little bit tricky with quickly rising ice water in level 5.

'Splosion Man is also a pretty good deal considering it's the only Summer of Arcade game that isn't 1200 points, has a 50 level single player (3 of which I assume are bosses since there are only 47 cakes to find), and an entirely different 50 level multiplayer both online and local. Plus, it's pretty fun watching scientists hemorrhage hams and steaks while you run around acting like Freakazoid on fire.

I played a few rounds of 1 vs 100 last night and it's pretty good fun. The questions are tough enough towards the end of the round to make getting epic scores tantalisingly tricky and I like the way it matches you against three other people so you feel like you're competing, rather than just answering questions for half an hour. My best score was 111,000 odd, fairly short of the 140,000 you need to get on the high score table but certainly above average. I might have a go at one of the live ones if I happen to be in on Friday or Saturday evening.