divine visitor

New columnist: N'gai Croal.

I was only leafing through the review section in the shop, so I haven't read the column yet, but N'gai's a great choice. He sometimes seems to be the only proper journalist writing about games on the internet. He has a tendency to be a bit serious and long-winded, but Edge have done well to get him.

Really? He's a really good writer - maybe I'll check Edge out this month.

Fan art. I got Meryl's hair a bit wrong though - I was sketching from memory.

Much as part of me is cheering about this I wish XBLA relied less on retro stuff and HD remakes.

Yeah, I agree. After reading the news about Rez HD this morning, I was a bit suprised to catch myself thinking "So what?"

There's no way you could've seen this trailer back at E3 2000 and not be super-excited for Phantasy Star Online.

Fable has gotta be up there, for sure.

I'm not sure if the DC is overrated. If you see how many people still love it and actively play it, and it's quite unique with it's superb accurate arcadeports and batch of hardcore shooters. It isn't the machine for me, but I can see why people still love it a lot and are sad that it's gone without a spiritual successor taking its place.

Yeah, for me at least, it was a very unique machine that brought out the best in Sega, and a number of other arcade-oriented developers too. For many reasons, including the death and rebirth of Sega, the decline of the arcade industry, the shift in focus towards developing for American audiences by key Japanese developers, the growth of casual gaming markets etc. there's never really been anything quite like the Dreamcast since, and probably never will be. I loved it.

In hindsight, the controller is unbelievably awful, though.

Let's have some online play please, Camelot/Capcom. And everything customisable, etc.

To chip in with my experience - I get motion sickness in some FPS games (Half-Life 2 was pretty bad, and I could barely last 10 minutes in Red Steel), but I'm about an hour in, and haven't experienced any ill-effects at all; the control system is incredibly well done, it's the nearest thing to a mouse and keyboard I've experienced on a console. Given a good amount of practice (and a fair amount more forearm stamina on my part), I almost feel it could challenge M&K for my preference. In short - delightful.

Really? Did you get motion sickness with Metroid Prime 1?

I just couldnt get through Prime 1 due to terrible motion sickness, and didn't want to get Prime 3 out of fear it'll do the same thing.

MGS3 Subsistence. And Metroid 1 on NES. I'm finding both quite enjoyable.

I haven't payed more than £30 for a game in years, but I reckon £35-ish would be my absolute maximum.

Even then, I try to offset the cost of buying a new game by getting rid of some others I don't play anymore.

Yeah I played the original MGS3 back when it came out, and having recently decided to play through all the MGS games again, I borrowed the Subsistence version of MGS3 to play instead this time around. Man does the new view make it a whole lot better!

Also, I'd forgotten just how superb this game is. It's a pure thinking man's stealth-em up compared to the previous two. Gotta take your time and really use the environment and stuff rather than relying on funky remote controlled missiles and other such gadgetry.

And the boss fight with The End is crazy good wicked cool.

Still using my LG ex-rental 20" mono big round-screen CRT tv. Does what is says on the tin. I don't need no HD.

Doodles and things:

Wii Sports Golf, easily. Couldn't go back to dpad/button controlled golf now, even if I wanted to. Just like with Wii Tennis.

But before the Wii came along and ruined my ability to enjoy anything else, I had a great time with Actua Golf on the ol' PSOne.

Farg!- TOO MUCH AWESOME!

F*ck in ell divine! what are these for? please tell me these are for an animation or something? they're dripping in character.

Oh man - I'm imagining a cartoon with those characters in now.

Love 'em to bits.

Now do a little kid and some sort of animal in the same style!

(Preferably a Moo cow)

Hehe, sorry, no little kid or Moo Cow, but yeah they're meant to be animated.

Really cool work, Couk. Especially the colours. I dunno how you guys do it really, I don't have the patience to mess around with vectors these days.

Model sheets for something. Brief was: nice shapes, easy to draw. The guy reminds me of James Woods, for some reason

Don't forget Metal Gear Solid: Protable Ops, everyone - it really is a true, direct sequel to MGS3, and adds yet more to the story of Big Boss.

I love Nintendo so much, remember when they were saying they weren't competing with Sony but with things like TV and and that?

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle2056279.ece

In all fairness though, Japanese TV is quite awful.

Why feel guilty? Would you feel guilty about heading off to the cinema or playing a round of golf instead?

Most people's top 10's (me as well) are fairly predictable and boring, imo. It's the 11-20 where it really starts to get interesting and more personal - where you'll find the games you couldnt quite justify scoring higher than the Zeldas, Marios, Ico, Resi 4 etc. but you love them so much anyway that they only just miss the cut.

1 Super Smash Bros Melee (GC)

2 Zelda: Link's Awakening (original monochrome one) (GB)

3 Metal Gear Solid (PS)

4 Virtua Fighter 5 (Arcade, PS3)

5 Super Mario Bros Deluxe (GBC)

6 Super Mario World (SNES)

7 Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64)

8 Wii Sports (Wii)

9 OutRun 2 (Arcade)

10 Resident Evil 4 (GC)

Mr Marijeanne, where was the snakescarf girl from? Was she from some concept art for the Airmail animation? Regardless, I love her - I do wish you'd post your work on here more often.

Yeah, she was from an early version of Airmail. That particular animation went through a lot of changes during production, so I ended up with a ton of concept sketches for characters/environments that didn't quite make it to the final film. You like her snake scarf? She's got funky cool puppy shoes too

Not sure what counts as a character - a lot of these are just doodles