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Squid of Man

"I got your number...I steal your thunder...I got your mother's maiden name tattooed on my arm..."




Farewell, old friend...


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...and thanks for a great three years. As a shiny white 360 prepares to take your place, I think a little retrospective is in order. So I present to you what remains of it's hard drive contents: my saved games. Pretend they're being narrated to you by Morgan Freeman.

Beyond Good & Evil - I loved this game. It was different, exotic, had nice combat controls....but just felt empty after a while, and I never got around to finishing it. Ancel would later reveal it was a mere shell of the game he had in mind. No shit.
Time spent playing: Probably 2-3 weeks.

Burnout 3 - Well. Yeah. Cars, flames, boost. If it hadn't had Slider it would have been the perfect racing game.
Time spent playing: 5-6 weeks

ESPN NFL 2K5 - The best American Football game on the last generation of consoles. It was digital treachery when the NFL sold it's soul to EA, cursing us to endless annual updates of Madden 2001.
Time spent playing: 6-8 months on and off. Mainly when drunk. Was a good multiplayer party game.

Fable - Ah, Fable. You were linear, you were short, you were predictable, and you delivered about 1/10th of what you were supposed to deliver. And I still loved you, because the world was just so rich, and for some reason playing around with the hair and armour became more involving than the quest itself.
Time spent playing: 2-3 weeks.

Fifa 2004 - Blah blah blah. I got this before i'd played Pro Evo. I need say no more.
Time spent playing: Too long.

Fifa 2005 - I HAD played Pro Evo by this stage. I was also suffering from chronic food poisoning, and was at home for a week shitting my asshole out. For some reason, the thought of officially licensed teams and kits soothed my burning sphincter.
Time spent playing: Until I got better. Which was about four days after I got it.

Full Spectrum Warrior - Managed to pick up a free copy through EB, and really got into it. Maybe because it played out like a puzzle game, maybe because it had a decent "story" that steered clear of flag-waving patriotism, I don't know, but I played this out for ages, and then recommended it to a while to a bunch of people who would universally hate it.
Time spent playing: 2-3 months.

Galleon - Got it for a review I was writing. Loved the control method and the fact it actually got released. Hated the stupid level design, which ultimately ruined the game.
Time spent playing: 2 weeks.

Halo 2 - You may have heard about this one. Started great, ended terribly, and the plasma sword thing made MP fantastic. I did not approve, however, of the changes made to Blood Gulch.
Time spent playing: 2 months.

Jet Set Radio Future - It's just not as good as the Dreamcast version.
Time spent playing: 3 weeks.

Madden NFL 2005 - Uh. Yeah. Compared to ESPN, it's rubbish. Only got it because a bunch of friends got it and they kept kicking my ass.
Time spent playing: 3-4 weeks on and off (mainly multi-player)

Mercenaries - Never actually owned this game. Glad I didn't. Great idea, and the sequel should be awesome, but this was an empty and lifeless game. Blowing shit up is always good for five minutes, though.
Time spent playing: 1-2 days.

Need for Speed Underground 2: Another review game. I swear. The scars from this game still haven't healed.
Time spent playing: Long enough to wound me. Inside.

Outrun 2: Criminally underrated. Everything you could ask for in a remake - enough of the original to pay homage, and enough changes to make it relevant. And that blonde girl was fine.
Time spent playing: 1 week

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - Oh Jesus. What did they do to him? This game poisoned the entire franchise for me. Whoever put the nu-metal shit on the menu screen needs to have his eyesockets fucked dry.
Time spent playing: 5-6 hours

Pro Evo Soccer 4 - Thank you. Thank you, Konami. Football distilled and refined into a video game.
Time Spent playing: 8-10 months

Pro Evo Soccer 5 - See above.
Time spent playing: 8 months and counting.

Project Gotham Racing 2 - Easily the Xbox's best racing game, made twice as good with Fu Manchu on the custom soundtrack. Kudos to you, Bizarre.
Time spent playing: 4-5 months

Puyo Pop Fever - Easily the worst game on the Xbox. It's just awful. Tetris with J-pop? Christ, it was torture.
Time spent playing: 30 minutes

Red Dead Revolver - As a game, it was pretty average, but Rockstar managed to squeeze so many Leone references into it that it becamse quite awesome. The quick-draw mechanics were sweet as well. Especially the "tournament" at the end. Oh yeah.
Time spent playing: 3 hours, 54 minutes to complete. Still picking it up now and then over a year later.

Republic Commando - Fuck you Lucasarts.
Time spent playing: 3-4 days.

Chronicles of Riddick - Halo got the sales, but this was the Xbox's finest FPS moment. The "presence" of your legs and hands made the world a lot more believable, and the stealth combat was unusually enjoyable. The carnage of the finale was a sheer delight.
Time spent playing: 1 week.

NRL Rugby League - Some of my friends are "blokes". They like Rugby League. And this game. They are fucking idiots.
Time spent playing: 2 nights. Both drunk. Both God-awful.

Shadow Ops: Red Mercury - Another sacrifice in the name of a review. Everything that Riddick and Halo did right, this did wrong.
Time spent playing: 2 days.

Star Wars: Battlefront - Fuck you Lucasarts
Time spent playing: 1 day

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - A repetitive, boring cut-em-up that I just didn't stop playing because I'm a loser fanboy of the whole damn franchise.
Time spent playing: 1 month

Lord of the Rings: The Third Age - Sweet merciful Christ. When you want to copy an RPG, you do not copy Final Fantasy. And you do not kill Sauron by climbing the tower and hacking his eye with an axe. Ungh.
Time spent playing: 3 weeks.

UEFA Euro 2004 - Fifa in fancy dress. As crap as Fifa, but the tournament was on and I needed to satiate myself with officially licensed electronic entertainment. Then Greece won, and I realised it was rubbish, and returned it for my money back.
Time spent playing: six days

And so there you have it. And before you say it, no, I never owned Halo.


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