[360] Official XBLA thread. Complain about the new price points but buy the garbage anyway!

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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 Mad Cows have been replaced by the Buffalo of Lies for the past several Worms games.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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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...

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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 am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Tritoch

Several other weapon-based achievements count there too, like the one for using 10 Armageddons.

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.

FELIPE NO

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...

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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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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

Quote:

From Gamespot.com

Konami announced today it will publish an Adult Swim adaptation based on the music-themed show Metalocalypse. Developed by Frozen Codebase, the action-based Metalocalypse: Dethgame will open on Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network in the fourth quarter of 2009. Series cocreator Brendon Small is behind the new game, which will allow players to become roadies ("Klokateers") for the show's central characters--"the world's most brutal Norwegian heavy metal band," Dethklok.

The protagonist must repel an onslaught of frenzied mutant fans who threaten the lives of the musicians and the "metal faithful," with a handful of minigames thrown in as well. Combat will be set to the band's tracks from Dethklok: The Dethalbum, with three new songs from the upcoming Dethklok 2. As with all Dethklok songs, the fictional band's new tracks will be composed by Small and three other musicians.

"We have gone above and beyond and found the biggest nerds in the industry to help develop and deliver what will without a doubt be the most successful downloadable cartoon death metal game in recorded history," Small said. "I defy anyone to find another death metal cartoon that can claim the same."

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

How ya doing, buddy?

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.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

The Live ones are about 2 hours long and can get kind of boring because The One is always a dunce, and choosing a new One after that means you have to sit through another commercial that they've played a million times before in Extended Play. But at least they've started giving prizes away lately. Oh yeah and it seems like a real live experience because they have the host Chris Cashman talking throughout the breaks which is pretty neat.

It is mighty hard to get picked for the Mob, I've been playing since it started and I still only get put in the Crowd. It's kind of unfair right now, you're only supposed to be in the Mob once per Live episode/season and last time there was one guy who won a prize 4 times in one Live game. But I imagine that will all be worked out by the time December hits. Lately I've been getting random network errors, too. Never had problems with the game until the past two weeks, pretty irritating to get kicked out and not be allowed back in due to errors on their part.

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Is Chris Cashman hosting the UK version, or is there somebody different?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I think for the UK, the host is James McCourt.

FELIPE NO

It was fun at first, but then Chris Cashman announced during one of the sessions that this was the Beta (which I knew) and that prizes weren't actually being given away (which I did not know). It didn't matter because I hadn't won anything yet, but for some reason that just killed my interest in the game for now.

It's a lot of fun and I like how you're competing against three others so you actually feel like you win at something compared to the thousands of other users competing with everyone else. It's nearly impossible to come out as one of the top 3 from the crowd though, because the way to do it is to mash one of the answer buttons before the answer even appears so you get more points for it. It's like you're almost guessing even if you know the answer to the question.

I might consider getting it in December when it finally launches.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

That's a step up from (Emmy-award winning) Chris Cashman then. Poor Chris can't even get his own picture on Wikipedia, and his Emmy is for some local show he did in the northwest. Besides that, I don't think he's ever done anything noteworthy.

They're giving out prizes now, SuperSonic.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well I'll be damned, thanks for the info nutty. I might get back in on this.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Surely if you mash the buttons though you just get a lot wrong and get no streak bonus? There were some people playing in the beta games I played the other night with an average answer time of like 0.46 seconds and they managed a grand total of fuck all points and one would imagine, got really fucking bored just sitting there for half an hour mashing a button mindlessly.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Colonel Skills

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.

And...not any more!

IGN: TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-Priced

800 points now because everyone and their dog asked what the fuck the deal was with the 1200 point price on TMNT.

Chalk one up for collective, community wide bitching.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

One of the few times when bitching was actually warranted...and I still won't get it at 800 points L O L.

I was speaking idiomatically.

GET A JOB

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

So, since I can't find it anywhere and suck at google: when the FUCK is episode 2 of Wallace & Gromit coming out for this bitch? I mean, most I've seen is July 2009, and next week will be AUGUST. Also the 4th episode is out on PC. Why so slow, Telltale?

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by wvlfpvp

So, since I can't find it anywhere and suck at google: when the FUCK is episode 2 of Wallace & Gromit coming out for this bitch? I mean, most I've seen is July 2009, and next week will be AUGUST. Also the 4th episode is out on PC. Why so slow, Telltale?

I think it's because of Summer of Arcade.

How ya doing, buddy?