GMC

i'm staying clear of this till christmas. Haven't touched paper mario in a fortnight due to being knackered / playing quick bursts of lost levels. I'm gonna be tough on myself until i've finished SPM.... I hope i can hold out. PS, i walked out of virgin megastores with Sunshine a day before the release date due to a cheery sales assistant who couldnt say no. I felt like i'd pulled a fast one and would be knee-deep in mario goodness before loads of folk. Turned outo to be cack. Great at the start, but lost it too quickly. Hope that Galaxy isnt all mouth and no trousers like sunshine.

i know the recent posts have all been of the "i've just finished the game" flavour, but i just had to chip in and say that my girlfriend just bought this game. I've only played it for about half an hour, but its great. So.. yeah. My opinion. A bit late to the table, but hopefully still valid!

no probs. I think its one of those things where, the minute you think about it, you're screwed. Its easy to get a bit flustered and start hacking up the grass polygons trying to get the swerve on it. Looking forward to the review!

Hellfire, first, make sure you are in 'advanced' swing mode (game doesn't help you out as much and hence lets you suffer the 'mistakes' of a draw shot... handy if you actually mean to do it! If i play with a lower rating than advanced, i find it very difficult to draw or fade) secondly, if you are right-handed and want to 'draw' the ball left - point the wiimote down. hold the trigger. twist the 'mote about 45 degrees towards the left. Swing while holding this angle. It should work. When trying out the swings i noticed that, as a right-hander, i naturally seem to 'fade' when i'm pulling back, but this does not translate into an accidental fade on the actual shot. I think there must be a well thought-out tolerance for some accidental drawing or fading. BTW, i notice that its a lot more likely to hit a hook shot when coming off of rough or using a wedge (just as it is a lot easier to go way over your power meter on the wedge shots. 125 percent... the only time i get this number in the game) Overall i like the fact that its not as easy to come up with the 'exact' shot you need. On previous console versions it becomes a wee bit tedious as you can repeatedly get the perfect shot.. and you get angry if you don't. As my mate who played it the other day said after hitting a nasty hook into nowhereland: "shit, i do that in real life". It takes patience and practice, which i think is great.

i second that, K-Project. I got this game when it came out for 30 quid and its a great purchase. Seemed a lot more entertaining than motorstorm from what i played of the ps3 game. VExcitetruck has that arcadey immediacy and over-the-top old school SegaRally style but with that points system its very moreish. Theres a lot of replayability in this game. If you like racers or remember stuffing Sega Rally/ Daytona arcade machines with 50ps, buy it

damn, meant to say Virgin, not HMV. Same difference anyways. Europe waits 5 months, but GMC waits 6 just for laughs

Ordered from HMV. Probably won't see it come through my door till Julember. Bastard.

i find this game to be tough as boots for a while, then you suddenly get a breakthrough. You repeat the same moves on the same courses and get the same 'B' score for ages, wondering how the hell can you squeeze more points out with fancy moves while still driving well enough to come 1st(for more points). After many attempts it just seems possible to do the perfect race - you get a lot of points and get pipped on the line, then the next time you finish first by a mile with craploads of points in the bag. Theres a real sense of frustration in excitetruck, but the good kind where you are annoyed at yourself rather than the game. Makes the inevitable victory all the sweeter. I've not played it in a while, and need to get some more S ranks for some courses. With other games distracting me i just need to get my head down and just play the bastard till it gives in!

Been waiting for this game since... since... well, it seems like forever. Ordered it the same day i ordered Tiger Woods 08, so it almost completely went out of my mind since that arrived. Now that i've I checked the boards and rememebered its out this friday - this will be a long, long week.

I held off buying 07 when i heard 08 was just around the corner (5 months away). I too was hoping for on-line - its exclusion is really annoying considering how perfect golf is for on line what with lag not being a problem. The controls in Tiger 08 are great, i've had a few sessions where i've had to put trainers on as my feet get sore standing up for four hours straight - i think that is a testament to how well the game plays. Graphics look okay but on my widescreen it still has the black bars which i have to stretch out with the TV settings. And its not progressive-scan which makes it look bit blurry. They're still using the oooooold tiger engine and seem not be improving it at all. As Jammy said, they are holding back on what they fix each year, but this makes tiger look rough on anything but a CRT. Forgetting the graphics for a minute, my golfing mate came round the other day and fooking loved it. Its just a shame they didnt do the most basic of graphical improvements - 16:9 and progressive scan. Also - a question for anyone that has it: is it possible to export your golfer to another wii? I think you could do that in previous Ps2 versions. I dont think it can be done, but it will be a real shame if you can't somehow take your golfer to your mate's house and instead have to use one of the standard-issue players on their machine.

Anybody have any official date for Tiger Woods 08? Websites say 31st of this month, as do the local Game.

Well put. There was a time when i was obsessively playing the game, and messing around with where to put the phones etc, then it was like someone slapped me in the face and i though WTF am i doing? Strangely though, the same thing could be said of most games/sports. Another person who doesnt have a passion or interest in what your doing can watch the game of football/cricket/rugby/Final Fantasy/Football Manager/Virtua Fighter that you are drooling over and just shake their heads with disbelief. As ive said earlier, metroid prime had for me a moment when i suddenly switched sides and asked myself "do i have to go down this fucking corridor again?". In a split second i saw it in a different light.

Great topic! My two are Sexx Laws by beck. Just remember going round the wario course in N64 with that on repeat. Was great kart music... it has been transferred to the SD card for excite truck nowadays. Also, leisure suit larry and every track on everything must go my the manics. Alt+tab into "cd player" back in the glory intel 486 days (i think)

metroid prime for me too. its weird to say this about a game, but i found it.. depressing. i dont mean depressingly bad, i just mean it was so dour and grim. i know thats an element of the story etc, but i just didnt take to it. Weird.

i thought f-zero gx was an amazing game once you got into it, but like stefkov, wasnt a fan of the story mode. it was a pain in the arse.. and some of the challenges were evil! Its a difficult game to dip into after a while of not playing it due to the crazy speed etc. its the flip side of mario kart.

bang on, mario eating herbs to improve his performance suddenly becomes troubling if you make an official Olympic game!

I posted about this on page 9 of the Mario Party 8 thread about an hour and a half ago. Basically my comments come down to: a)this mess shows we do not get any localization b)as a european country, we have to wait for all the languages to be ready, i accept that - but if we are waiting, why dont we get any effort put into english? c)if they basically ship us the US version (with tacked on euro languages), why not cut us a break and just do a quickie pal conversion from a US master .. since that, in effect is what they do for the UK anyway

quite correct. The UK is part of europe... but they obviously didnt actually bother to 'translate' it for the UK. If we just get the US version of games' date=' why do we have [i']any[/i] delay?

I've got no intention of buying this game. But i am annoyed at it being recalled because of one very simple reason, which can be summarised in this question: Nintendo, why the fuck did it take over a month after the US release to be brought out in europe? It obviously wasnt for translation purposes as you didnt bother, so... why? If they are going to delay games for "localization", they should at least try to localize it to keep up the lie. Don't you think? Although maybe this is the proof that they need months and months to localize games. Trauma Centre, and paper mario, anyone?

I agree. I want something that looks like it came from previous mario games. Get some tracks that look like SMB1, 2, 3, World. Get some retro tunes and SFX in there. As i said before - we need options. I want to be able to play my mate who doesnt have the game and have a good contest/laugh, but i also want to be able to crank down the items when im playing someone who has the game too. its no fun beating the sh!t out of a novice (for you and the novice), and its no fun having a race against a good player reduced to an item lottery. Give us a slider where we can state the ability of each player (ie. if crap, they get great items, if good, regular items etc), or just give us the options Strikers-style to turn items off etc I think we need excitetruck-style craziness (the craziness experience in one player, when fast trucks are all over the place crashing and smashing) which involves lots of opponents lots of contact on corners and lots of speed. If they let us change the settings for races more than they have before, the game could be much more flexible and please more people. You want loads of items - not probs, you want no items and a hardcore race - no probs... just let us choose and we can all have the race we want. And again... this better be online.

tracks: give us some cool, detailed but cartoony city courses(Diamond City from Wario?); stay away from isle delfino (mario sunshine infected DD too much); some paper mario style courses (postmodern jobs set in the underground levels from mario 1?). Controls/Handling: Give us some insane f-zero-style gx speed; get rid of snaking; i like excitetruck but think we need less 'floaty' controls.. so nunchuck for steering and wiimote for aiming etc as said above. music - if its as infuriatingly addictive as the intro tune to DD then i'll be happy. characters/weapons: no sonic please... this mario kart, not a smash bros get-together; keep favouring the karts at the rear with good powerups... we all hate getting done by a blue shell, but in multiplayer with people that dont have the game themselves, it makes it more fun - just give us a strikers-style option to turn off/customize the appearance of items oh - on-line too. dont forget that.

If Nintendo have 3 or 4top-drawer titles to release, i think its understandable that they stagger them accross regions depending on how popular the franchises are. We would all like it if they released MP3, MK, Galaxy etc all in same quarter, but it would make no sense financially. If the MK rumour is true, nintendo are buying free publicity as word of mouth spreads across the atlantic with both sets of fans hungry for news from the other. I know we got stiffed on Paper Mario, and will probably be stiffed again, but strikers, and now maybe MK being euro firsts is a bonus. We were never going to get all the big hitters in one go, and something was going to slip. personally, (if true) im glad MK is coming first. How often do we get exclusives in europe? Enjoy this one and salivate over screenies from america... they'll be doing the same.

did they contact you about it first or did it just appear at your door with an IV drip and plaster cast on its leg? **UPDATE*** just completed a lunch-hour drive to the post office and house. wii and ds are now back - i was given new units. nintendo help line said that when i connect the wii to the net, it should have my points and games available for download as "they will have changed over your account". if all is not as promised, they said to call back and they will enable the 'free' downloads for me. on the refund issue, the bloke said that the nintendo return policy is that they will repair and return, but it is our responsibilty as consumers to get the units to them. He said that nintendo have an agreement with argos that that argos will return the console for free on behalf on the customer within the first year (if you bought the unit at argos), but apart from that, its the customers responsibility. He did say that nintendo are considering changing this and advised me to write a letter to their HQ. Im unsure about how effective this is or if he was just throwing me lines, but i think i'll write anyway. On the mii issue - i might just start again, the only games ones that i have that use them are sports, play, and wario. play and wario are easy, and maybe its an excuse to start playing sports seriously again. Strikers uses it too, but losing my online stats for that would be a bonus!

according to the front page. TW08 doesnt have online play. EA always leave something out.