Ever since I have been sinking my teeth into curtain game genres such as Hack and Slash games and fighting games, I have come to realize that some titles seem to get to a point where the game stops being difficult and just becomes frustrating. This is typical of some hack and slash titles and some fighting games as well. I am of corse talking about cheap boss’s.

An example of a non-cheap boss and he is called DR ROBOTNIK not Egg man!

So for those of you who don’t fully understand the concept of a cheap boss let me explain. imagine Your pretty much at the end of a level/game and there is the final boss staring at you and you launch into battle. Next thing you know you are being pummeled by all sorts of over powered moves that you can’t block or find it near on impossible to dodge. So you find yourself dying time after time to beat this git, untill you A)extremely lucky and beat the boss out of sheer luck. Or B) Find yourself going to your latest video game retailer and buying yourself a new controller because the last one you had is now in tiny pieces scattered around your living room/bedroom.

So why do developers implement cheap bosses into games? Is it just to piss gamers off? Are the Developers trying to get 1 up on the gamers, thinking they worked hard on this game so we should work hard defeating it? This I cannot answer now, but what I can do for you is give you some warning. I bring to you the top three cheapest Boss’s in my opinion. This is hope that you can save yourselves from hours of frustration, or you can just have a go at these guys and see what I mean.

WARNING: The next bit of this article will now contain spoilers for Devil May Cry 3, Dante’s Inferno and Street Fighter IV. You Have Been Warned.

Arkham – Devil May Cry 3

This demonic blob from the demon realm has to be a pretty cheap ass boss because he just doesn’t let you get near him. His main trick it to push you backwards with demon power and then pummel you from a distance with things like flying demon tentacles and demonic eels sprouting from the floor. It’s only once you get close to him you can deal some damage. If you don’t have infinite DT then your pretty much screwed. You have to be very precise with dodges, so i suggest your best bet here is to use trickster and dodge like you have never dodged before. Then as soon as the eels come from the floor it’s a case of jumping and firing your rocket launcher at the floor.

Lucifer – Dante’s Inferno

It may come to no surprise to you that the lord of Hell is the boss in this game. When you first fight him your thinking this is easy. But it is his second stage you have to be aware of. He attacks you in his humanoid state, what really annoyed me about this was that my attacks were doing hardly any damage, and every now and again he would teleport and then spam an uber move on me leaving me incapacitated. Weather it was smashing the ground or firing hellish demon power at me, moves like that would take half my health bar down in one. So my advice here is get yourself the holy armour spell, equip it and spam the crap out of him, yes it may take you several years and a million tries but it works eventually.

Seth – Street Fighter IV

Now this is one of those cheap bosses which I have no strategy for. This is the cheapest boss I have come across in my gaming career. He loves to spam moves such as the pile-driver which takes a huge chunk of your health out, and the chain three shyroken. If your lucky he may do both at the same time. Oh and don’t forget the move where he kicks you and it suddenly becomes a million kick combo. That’s a doozy. So that’s what to watch out for, I suggest using maybe Bison or Dhalsim so you can teleport and dodge his attacks, or maybe fight fire with fire and use Seth himself if you have Super Street Fighter IV.

So there you have it, the top three cheap bosses in my recent gaming career that have really given my a hard time. There are probably more which I have blanked from my mind because they annoyed me that much. So with all this in mind, what are your top three cheapest Bosses and why?

Garv.

The winners of the Golden Joystick Awards 2010 are…

Action/Adventure game of the year
Winner: Assassins Creed II
Runners up: Batman:Arkham Asylum, Red Dead Redemption

Fighting game of the year
Winner: Super Street Fighter IV
Runners up: Tekken 6, Soul Caliber: Broken Destiny

Download game of the year
Winner: Plants Vs Zombies
Runners up: Battlefield 1943, Call of Duty World at war- Zombies

Music game of the year
Winner: Guitar Hero 5
Runners up: Dj Hero, The Beatles Rock Band

Portable game of the year
Winner: Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver
Runners up: Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines, Plants Vs Zombies

Racing game of the year
Winner: Forza Motorsport
Runners up: Need for speed: Shift

Soundtrack of the year
Winner: Final Fantasy XIII
Runners up: Brutal Legend, Assassin’s Creed II

RPG of the year
Winner: Mass Effect 2
Runners up: Fallout 3: Game of the year edition, Final Fantasy XIII

Puzzle game of the year
Winner: World Of Goo
Runners up: Professor Layton And Pandora’s box, Scribblenauts

Sports game of the year
Winner: FIFA 10
Runners up: Wii Sports Resort, Skate 3

Online game of the year
Winner: League Of Legends
Runners up: Aion, Farmville

Strategy game of the year
Winner: Plants Vs Zombies
Runners up: The Sims 3, Age of Empires III: Complete Edition

Shooter of the year
Winner: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Runners up: Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Left 4 Dead 2

Uk Developer of the year
Winner: Jagex
Runners up: Rockstar North, Codemasters

One to watch
Winner: Call of duty: Black Ops
Runners up: Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: The Old Republic

Ultimate game of the year
Winner: Mass Effect 2
Runners up: Call of duty: Modern Warfare 2, Assassins Creed II

So there you have it, this years game of the year as voted by you, the gaming community. Though the Ultimate game of the year nominees came as no surprise, some of the other categories caused somewhat of a stir amongst the press and developers alike.  In the Action/Adventure catagory the common predition seemed to be that Batman: Arkham Asylum or Red Dead Redemeption would walk away as winners, and so needless to say seeing Assassin’s Creed II take the top spot was a bit of A surprise. Likewise when Final Fantasy XII walked away with the award for Best soundtrack, there were a lot of unhappy Brutal Legend fans readying their Axes for battle amongst the press ranks. Myself amongst them.  Plants Vs Zombies also caused some controversy winning both the Download game of the year and the Stratargy game of the year categories. I mean we all like killing Zombies with Foliage but two awards, surely thats just greedy! Though a couple of the awards may have caused mumblings amongst the crowd, generally the atmosphere was lively and positive in the ballroom today. With Super Street Fighter IV, Forza Motorsport, Guitar Hero 5, FIFA 10, Call of Duty and of course Mass Effect 2 all scooping awards in their respective categories it seemed that once again when it comes to games, the gaming community really do know best.

Until next time,

24

x

Ever since I have been sinking my teeth into curtain game genres such as Hack and Slash games and fighting games, I have come to realize that some titles seem to get to a point where the game stops being difficult and just becomes frustrating. This is typical of some hack and slash titles and some fighting games as well. I am of corse talking about cheap boss’s.

An example of a non-cheap boss and he is called DR ROBOTNIK not Egg man!

So for those of you who don’t fully understand the concept of a cheap boss let me explain. imagine Your pretty much at the end of a level/game and there is the final boss staring at you and you launch into battle. Next thing you know you are being pummeled by all sorts of over powered moves that you can’t block or find it near on impossible to dodge. So you find yourself dying time after time to beat this git, untill you A)extremely lucky and beat the boss out of sheer luck. Or B) Find yourself going to your latest video game retailer and buying yourself a new controller because the last one you had is now in tiny pieces scattered around your living room/bedroom.

So why do developers implement cheap bosses into games? Is it just to piss gamers off? Are the Developers trying to get 1 up on the gamers, thinking they worked hard on this game so we should work hard defeating it? This I cannot answer now, but what I can do for you is give you some warning. I bring to you the top three cheapest Boss’s in my opinion. This is hope that you can save yourselves from hours of frustration, or you can just have a go at these guys and see what I mean.

WARNING: The next bit of this article will now contain spoilers for Devil May Cry 3, Dante’s Inferno and Street Fighter IV. You Have Been Warned.

Arkham – Devil May Cry 3

This demonic blob from the demon realm has to be a pretty cheap ass boss because he just doesn’t let you get near him. His main trick it to push you backwards with demon power and then pummel you from a distance with things like flying demon tentacles and demonic eels sprouting from the floor. It’s only once you get close to him you can deal some damage. If you don’t have infinite DT then your pretty much screwed. You have to be very precise with dodges, so i suggest your best bet here is to use trickster and dodge like you have never dodged before. Then as soon as the eels come from the floor it’s a case of jumping and firing your rocket launcher at the floor.

Lucifer – Dante’s Inferno

It may come to no surprise to you that the lord of Hell is the boss in this game. When you first fight him your thinking this is easy. But it is his second stage you have to be aware of. He attacks you in his humanoid state, what really annoyed me about this was that my attacks were doing hardly any damage, and every now and again he would teleport and then spam an uber move on me leaving me incapacitated. Weather it was smashing the ground or firing hellish demon power at me, moves like that would take half my health bar down in one. So my advice here is get yourself the holy armour spell, equip it and spam the crap out of him, yes it may take you several years and a million tries but it works eventually.

Seth – Street Fighter IV

Now this is one of those cheap bosses which I have no strategy for. This is the cheapest boss I have come across in my gaming career. He loves to spam moves such as the pile-driver which takes a huge chunk of your health out, and the chain three shyroken. If your lucky he may do both at the same time. Oh and don’t forget the move where he kicks you and it suddenly becomes a million kick combo. That’s a doozy. So that’s what to watch out for, I suggest using maybe Bison or Dhalsim so you can teleport and dodge his attacks, or maybe fight fire with fire and use Seth himself if you have Super Street Fighter IV.

So there you have it, the top three cheap bosses in my recent gaming career that have really given my a hard time. There are probably more which I have blanked from my mind because they annoyed me that much. So with all this in mind, what are your top three cheapest Bosses and why?

Garv.

I could hear the sighs of relief going out across the gaming universe as avid Street Fighter fans read the title of this article, and yes, I am somewhat pleased too. The fact that Super Street Fighter IV is now implementing a proper tournament mode makes me very happy indeed. I used to spend hours a night on Soul Caliber IV on its tournament mode so Super Street Fighter IV implementing this mode is right up my street.

I might as well get the bad news out of the way while I am here. This mode will NOT be coming out on the games release next week which is a bit of a bummer, so yes it is going to be a DLC add-on. Lucky you will not have to folk out any cash for it. It’s a free download, yay. You just have to wait till June 15th for it to be released.

Now the bad news is out of the way, let’s get onto the good news and what this awesome mode has to offer we are looking at an online tournament mode that will let groups of street fighters band together in a tournament to the Death/Knock Out.This is pretty much just like the one in Soul Caliber IV, what happens is all the fighters will be placed on the tournament tree at the start of the torny, then the fights will begin. As fighters do battle the other players within the tournament will stand by and observe. All head sets will be active mind, so heckling of any kind is allowed, but if you do get a little bit too hacked off with one person then you can always mute them.

Like championship mode in the first game, character selection will be double-blind here, meaning you will not be able to see which character or opponent selects and visa versa so there will be no character cheating here. But sadly there isn’t a no ken selection option implemented into the mode. There is a replay mode however, kind of the same idea as Halo 3′s theater mode, you can watch back your fights in the tournaments replay theater. A nice little addition for those of you out there who like to rub a little salt into your opponents wounds.

Another thing I have found out which I thought was damn interesting was a Belt system. even though Tournament mode is not Ranked, some specific tournaments out there are going to have belts. These belts will be saved to your character, the awesome thing here though is that you cannot keep your belts forever, if someone does beat you in torny mode, you will have to give up your title. Now I am not sure if you can make your own title belt, but if you can be assured that a Plus XP title belt will be built if the opportunity arises.

To me tournament mode is going to be one hell of a great addition. It’s just a shame we have to wait just a bit longer.

Garv

For those of you asking, ‘What is Super Street Fighter IV (SSFIV) offering us that the original Street Fighter IV didn’t?here is al little insight.  Well they key fact to note down here is that this game will be packed with tons of extra content. We are looking at 10 new characters, a pile of new stages, bonus stages, new ultra combos, revamped multiplayer online, new challenge modes and the whole games has been returned and re-balanced. I’ll believe the last one when I see it mind, because I heard somewhere that Seth maybe even more of a cheap bastard than last time. But lets forget about that….for now.

One of the biggest things here is the new characters. Which I will now shed some light on, some of these guys will be old Street Fighter fan favorites making a return, others are brand spanking new characters.

T.Hawk

T.Hawk, aka Thunder Hawk is a pretty bad ass, buffed up indian tribes man. Back in Street Fighter II he came to the tournament seeking revenge against M.Bison. Who destroyed his home and killed his father. He then made an appearance in Street Fighter Alpha 3 where M.Bison kidnapped and brainwashed his sister Julia to do his bidding. He now returns to SSFIV, becuase Julia has gone missing again, and assumes Bison is up to his old tricks.

T.Hawk has been compared to the fighting style of Zangeif, lets hope he isn’t as cheap.

Dee Jay

Another fan favorite from Street Fighter II. Back in Street Fighter II He came into the world warrior tournament to seek out a new musical sound. As you can gather by his name, he is somewhat of a musical type, often compared to the likes of Eddie Gordo from the Tekken series.

To his friends and fans Dee Jay has been dubbed ‘the southern comet’ and has quite an unusual kick boxing style that some of you about there are bound to love.

No info has been found as to why he is making an appearance in SSFIV. Maybe it’s because he wants to re-sample some punch sound effects for his next single.

Adon

Sagat’s Pupil makes a return to the street fighter franchise. After his appearance in street fighter alpha 2 and 3. Adon briefly mad an appearance in Sagat’s prologue in the original street Fighter IV. He is now back in full form in SSFIV to prove his teacher wrong and try his best not to be knocked down by a single shinku hadoken from Ryu.

Adon’s fighting style is a lot like Sagat’s but implementing more acrobatic moves, meaning, when used well, this fighter will be a hard one to squash.

Cody

Cody Traves started out his fist fighting life in the game franchise Final Fight. He and another fighter named Guy started life there before being moved to the street fighter Roster in Street Fighter Alpha 3. Cody broke out of Bison in Alpha 3 after a prison riot, He then went travelling where he met up with his good friend Guy. Cutting a long story short the both of them went their separate ways after Alpha 3. Now the prison convict returns to SSFIV with his hands cuffed and his throwing knives in had.

Cody is a hardcore street brawler, powerful yet nimble at the same time, he is a well rounded character with a few nasty tricks up his cuffed sleeves.

Guy

Cody’s partner in crime is Street fighter Alpha 3 and another fighter from the final fight series. But after the Alpha 3, Guy and Cody went their seperate ways. Guy then committed a crime which Cody was later convicted and the two have not spoke since. Is guy’s return to SSFIV his only chance of getting to Cody? Will the two make up or kick off one hell of a fight? I am hoping the latter.

Guy has an interesting fighting style that is a mix on Ninjitsu and Modern Day street brawling. I cannot wait to play as him.

Dudley

Another boxer enters the ring. Dudley hails from the United Kingdom and is a gentle man boxer. His love for violence never overshadows his charm and manner. He made his first appearance in Street Fighter 3 2nd Impact where his fathers empire had fallen after his death and Dudley was left to pick up the pieces.

It is not known why he is making an appearance in SSFIV,  But i feel something nasty is going to happen when Dudley and Balrog cross paths.

Ibuki

Ibuki made her first appearance in Street Fighter III, she is a ninja warrior who has been trained from childhood. Her first appearance in street fighter III involved a Project G-File which was responsible for creating something called the Necro and Twelve. But whether this is relevant to SSFIV I am not too sure as the other characters in her story line do not feature in the latest game.

Ibuki uses Ninjitsu and is your classic Ninja warrior, fast agile and ready to kick butt.

Makoto

Makoto first Appeared in Street Fighter III 3rd Strike where her father’s death led to the collapse of the family Dojo where she had been brought up and trained. She then sought out Ryu, and a huge fight broke out, this in turn brought about a huge amount of publicity and d made her Dojo a huge success. She then took on the dojo, her students started to fizzle out after she introduced the new policy of ‘if you can beat me, your in’. She has no students left.

She is specially trained in Rindoukan karate and is a fast technical character, Her addition to Street Fighter IV is not known, but Ryu has to have something to do with it.

Hakan

A brand new character for SSFIV, Haken hales from Turkey. He is the president of the words most renowned edible oil factory. His desire to fight in the tournament is for a bit of fun and to make his wife and seven daughters proud.

Most if not all of Hakens fighting style revolves around how oily is body is, his moves are some of the most unusual in the street fighter Franchise. You have to love greased up comedy characters.

Juri

Last But not least, Juri! Juri is a new character for SSFIV. She has a pretty in-depth story which involves her father going after M.Bison’s company, Shadaloo.Her father was a lawyer and his sole purpose was to prosecute Shadaloo, but he and his family were all kidnapped by the organisation. Juri lost her parents and her left eye through the ordeal. Her left eye was replaced and given the power of the Feng Shui System. Not much else is known about her as yet.

Juri’s fighting style is offensive based using a lot of kicks. She is very powerful and is out for revenge, making this character a very hard one to defeat.

So there you have it, all ten of the new fighter confirmed for Super Street Fighter IV. Now I must save some pennies for the games release next month.

Garv

This weekend however, the whole core witing team finally got together for a day of arcade gaming and general Rockband-ary, and believe me when I say that Gaming journalist teams don’t get any better than this one.

So what happens when you get an FPS nutter, a RPG Lunatic, a Beanie Wearing strategist, a plastic guitar wielding Goddess and a guy who just loves to film everything gaming related under the sun, into the same space together? Yep, you have guessed it, some pretty Epic gaming carnage, topped off with a sprinkle of comedy mayhem. So what did we get up to for about twelve hours? Well gather round children, for I shall tell you of the legend that is the Plus XP first meet up.

As we were in London, we thought it would be stupidly rude for us not to hit the biggest arcade in the glorious capital, The Trocadero. Some of you frequent viewers have now probably guessed that this place is kind of my local now. But hey who the hell can refuse endless amounts of arcade gaming? Well I say endless amounts, more like how much arcade gaming can we get away with a fiver?

When we first entered the huge awesomeplex that is the biggest ammusement arcade in London, Leon and myself didn’t hesitate in finding the Street Fighter IV Arcade cabinets. Back when both Leon and myself had Xbox Live gold, we would constantly play this game. I was new to it back then and he would forever be taking me down with Ryu. I however eventually discovered M.Bison and from then on we had some Epic battles. So you could imagine what happened here.

It was a heated battle, that eventually ended up in me losing. My verdict, never trust an arcade stick, play with a console controller.

With gaming meet ups at the Trocadero there is always something you have to do as a tradition. It happened when GuitarGirl, MarkBOSS and myself met up with the guys at Ready-Up at the same location. This tradition is none other than the Rambo Arcade machine Rally.

Yes I Felt Like Kicking It Rambo Style, But Something Tells Me That MarkBOSS Needed A Gun Too

Defiantly one of the most Awesomely-Epic arcade game out there. Nonstop shooting and killing, and yes there is even a Rambo rage function. Hence the face.

So after we killed our fair share of terrorists we hit other arcade machines such as Mario Kart, Bishi Bashi, a peculiar game involving jumping up and down repeatedly and what we have lovingly dubbed the W1N machine. A simple game called stack ‘em, where you have to stack blue boxes to reach the top. It’s all about timing, and if you miss you fail but still get some tokens to save up or spend at the prize shop, hence why it’s called the Win machine. Mark being awesome managed to get to the top of this mighty block tower and picked up a jackpot of 500 odd tickets, the lucky bugger. Mind you I still have 56 and I am proud of them.

Then we decided we were a bit tracaderoed out. By trocaderoed out what we really ment was we ran out of pound coins. So we headed back to GuitarGirls flat for some gaming.

Till the early hours we were playing the likes of Rock Band, Worms Armageddon, Vigilante 8, More Street Fighter IV and, well plenty More Rockband.

This is what we actually look like when we game....seriously!

You may remember me mentioning before that MarkBOSS was at this wonderful shin dig (well of course he was, he is part of the team) now, when markBOSS is around you know he is going to be armed with his Video camera. We have some classic Rockland moments lined up for all you Plus XP readers soon. Unfortunately they will not be with us this post, we are all busy people when we aren’t gaming.

So that was about it for one of the most Crazy fun filled Saturdays there has ever been since Eurogamer. I hope you enjoyed reading about it and hope to have another one soon. Maybe a community meet up, who knows.

I’ll leave you with this parting shot of the Plus XP team gaming when things get ugly. Come on guys you can’t expect all our gaming encounters to be all sunshine and lolly pops.

Garv

P.S. if you want to see the rest of the photos from the Meet, check out our Facebook Page

Super Street Fighter IV Promo

So what new stuff will we be expecting from this game revamp? Yes its gonna be sold as a seperate disc in shops, but it will come with a nice surprise for any ofyou SFIV owners out there. interestin. It will also have a full roster of twenty five characters. Meaning that you will get a massive 8 new characters to play with. You will get to choose from fan classics such as T-Hawk, and brand new street fighter characters such as themysterious Juri.

This game also includes, new ultra finishes, an enhanced online battle system and refined Street Fighter IV features.

This is set to be one hell of a title. Can not wait to its release, kinda makes me wanna go play more original Street Fighter IV. Stay tuned for more info as we hear it.

Garv