NGamer Issue 14 (October 2007)

OCTOBER 2007

It's rather odd to see the so-called October issue featuring the E3 coverage, but I guess this was on the shelves at the end of August and written in early August, late July. Nonetheless, there's plenty to pick apart.


*REVIEWS*

Not so bad (50-69%):

Mostly useless (30-49%):

Terrible (0-29%):

Anyone play Chicken Shoot? My days, is that the worst rated game in NGamer history? It's £4 in CEX so I'll probably pass.

Scrap that, there's a 4% review of the DS game Deal or No Deal which is laugh-out-loud funny. "Review aside, let's talk about the US host - Canadian Howie Mandel. Something has gone very, very wrong in the digitising process. His blubbery neck threatens to envelop his face, gross flesh-banana fingers flex and wobble, and his weird little mouth chirps out repetitive sound bites. This is the kind of beast your mum would describe to get you back in the house before curfew. " (Matthew Castle at his best).

There's a great "Best of the Forums" segment on page 97 that shows some recognisable names from this site.

The GameBoy name is officially "ended" by Nintendo which is mad to think that ten years later, we've had nothing else GameBoy-related.

This month is largely drivel in terms of new games, but Metroid Prime 3 has a release date of 26th October, so I'll be grabbing that in preparation for next month's NGamer

I got Alien Syndrome for GNamer Christmas one time. I had a quick pop at it and found it fun but difficult to control (all fingers and thumbs, me). That aside, yes, a month where the reviews were better than the games, for sure.

The forum section is sure to feature both names still here and ones sadly missed, too.

I think this might be near the point when I sold my Wii.

Man, I want to be more involved in these threads -- I got ten issues or so out of storage in preparation -- but I just don't have the time with my current ludicrous schedule

gjones wrote:

Anyone play Chicken Shoot? My days, is that the worst rated game in NGamer history? It's £4 in CEX so I'll probably pass.

Aye, quite a few of us have, we've got a big Chicken Shoot following on here. Kittsy's ABSOLUTE BAW-BOOTIN of a review is my favourite half-page from NGamer Magazine, ever. I took a photo of it from my copy of the magazine for another thread, here it is:



I don't know if it's NGamer's worst rated Wii game ever, but I personally don't think it's the worst Wii game I've played. It functions, it all works, it's just tepid, dull, and not dynamic at all. That said, it's definitely the worst Wii game I own today. I cleared out my Wii collection last year while I could still get money for it, and a lot of shite went to GAME in Ayr (and, no joke, half their pre-owned Wii stock is only because of me). I didn't have the heart to punt Chicken Shoot though; it's a very poor effort, but the memories of that NGamer review are just too funny.

Donkey Kong: Jet Race went to GAME in Ayr though, and it honks out the shop to this day. It's absolutely rotten. It might have been good on GameCube with the bongos, but the way it's played and presented on Wii dimishes any sort of quality that it might have had. It's right down there with Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Mario is Missing, Wario: Master of Disguise, FlingSmash and Urban Champion as being one of the very worst first-party Nintendo games that were unfortunately released.

Oh boy. Fucking CHICKEN SHOOT. I think I remember panicking a bit when this issue came out. Although, in this issue... is NO worse than 7%? Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live...

I haven't started reading this, but I agree that the NGamer crew were on top form to make up for the games themselves.

Uh-oh - I've double posted for "massive damage" as I think you kids say.

I'm still halfway through the previews section and I've already got a bucklet-load of random thoughts:

• As if disheveled by the disappointing games, they really do seem to be in full-on silly mode. Future uses of Wii Fit might be to "send data to medical experts, such as doctors or carpenters"; The NGTV Virtual Console features "Matthew dies a lot and Kittsy makes fun of him", giggling at Kyou no Wanko; the pie chart is just the CMYK values of the colours of the chart itself (white being labelled as the CMYK value "Paper")...
  
• The three separate ads for Glory Days 2 feature many images of humans, drawn by someone who hasn't seen a human before
  
• It's weird that certain things have been and gone in 10 years, namely the Wii Fit craze, and COD not being in WWII
  
• We're getting a Katamari game on Wii! No
  
• They knew the zapper was a big plastic waste of time straight away
  
• The Simpsons game features "extra special Wii bits"; I think that, even at the time, we'd figured out that this meant "bad remote-waggly sections to make up for the game being a poor port of the other versions
  
• Preview of "Blocks" which would become the Steven Spielberg Boom Blox. I'll save my comments about this for when the time comes...
  

To be fair, though, you'd have to have incredible self-control not to laugh at Kyou No Wanko...

Finally finished this. Interestingly, I forgot that, below Cappa's Chicken Shoot review scan, Chrissy mostly talks about the Iraq War during the Tamagotchi Party On! review.

I'd forgotten about the vast history of Chibi-Robo - we got the first one and the worst one it seems. I'd love to have played an English version of Park Patrol. I miss the Chibster.



Oh, and I feel I should copy the NGamer haiku from Chip:

NGamer is cool
It stops me going boo boo
All over my cat

Beautful.

I picked up Park Patrol for 99p off Music Magpie a few years ago but it wasn't particularly enjoyable. The sound effects were incredibly annoying and I only bought it because it was so cheap. It can be found in the UK but always with the U.S. box (thin black one) - prefer the American boxes to be honest. They are the same size as 3DS ones.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

gjones wrote:

Anyone play Chicken Shoot? My days, is that the worst rated game in NGamer history? It's £4 in CEX so I'll probably pass.

Aye, quite a few of us have, we've got a big Chicken Shoot following on here. Kittsy's ABSOLUTE BAW-BOOTIN of a review is my favourite half-page from NGamer Magazine, ever. I took a photo of it from my copy of the magazine for another thread, here it is:

Fantastic.

A few years back, myself and a group of mates were in the habit of tracking down absolute stinkers on Steam during Steam sales and gifting them to each other for a laugh. I kicked this habit off by purchasing everybody (including myself) a copy of Chicken Shoot and Chicken Shoot 2 - which has since mysteriously vanished from the Steam storefront - for the princely sum of 69p each. Regretted every penny spent. It wasn't even at that shockingly bad level of quality where it's funny. It was just insipid shite.

Now this right here was a quality purchase. My favourite part of that game was its store description:

"The Graveyard is a very short computer game. You play an old lady who visits a graveyard. You walk around, sit on a bench and listen to a song. It's more like an explorable painting than an actual game. An experiment with poetry and storytelling but without words.

Buying the full version of The Graveyard adds only one feature, the possibility of death. The full version of the game is exactly the same as the trial, except, every time you play she may die."