The GHZ Forum

Jeanne d'Arc was released last week, warn't it? Any of you cock coddlers have it? Is it good, is it bad, does Jeanne practice disquieting European grooming habits? I am most curious.


Also, totally unrelated, but I wonder if anyone knows anything about these guys: http://www.compileheart.com. It's a development group within Idea Factory and it doesn't look like they've done anything particularly arresting, but their logo is similar enough to the old Compile logo to make me go "hey thar." I wonder if there's any old Compile staff involved?

Speaking of defunct developers:

<img src="/gibbon/takahashi.jpg">

It's true that Hudson's heyday ended with the PC Engine 10 years ago, and it's also true that the last thing the Wii needs is another generic sports game, but if Master Takahashi says we should be playing badminton, maybe we should be playing badminton.

Actually, while we're on that topic, has anyone played Bomberman Live? It strikes me as a really good idea, but when I saw the Backbone Entertainment logo I immediately became doubtful. Is my concern for naught, or should I really not be dropping ten bucks on that?




<img src="/gibbon/castle_07.jpg">

I'm starting to like Ye Olde Matte's Hovering Castle forced meme.

And are you talking about that PSP game? It seems to be another boring JSRPG. Only new thing I've recently tried was Persona 3.

Bomberman Live is Bomberman on Xbox Live. It has local and online play, but the annoying thing about local multiplayer is every human player must be signed into a separate Live account. It's kind of stupid. Also, unlocked costume parts and achievements are unlocked to separate Live accounts, making it even more annoying to obtain everything.

Bomberman Live stays true to the style and feel of the series, and it shows. It's practically an apology for the offensive Zero Act or whatever it was called.

The range of stages is decent; I'd say it's about on par with the original Bomberman DS. Bomberman Live really shines in the options department, with everything customizable and a wider range of power-ups and power-downs seen in any series entry to date (to my knowledge). You can turn any power-up/down on or off to your liking. It's pretty neat.

If you really love Bomberman and want to play it online, Live is worth the purchase. If you're a local-only Bomberman guy, it might still be worth it. The demo is locked to only two human players if you want to try it out. It would have been nice to have a local LAN 8-player mode of sorts but alas, it was not meant to be.

Maybe they'll release a map pack or something to add more stages. I was really hoping for 4-on-4 Bomberman volleyball, like in Bomberman Online for the Dreamcast.

It's not a live account, it's just the Xbox Profiles. It's okay if people are really obsessive about their profiles and bring memory cards with theirs loaded to your house when they come to play or something. But if your friends don't have 360s or don't give a rat's ass then yeah, it's a giant pain. They should just implement a "Guest" profile.

Well, maybe I will try it...

There is a guest profile thing, but I dunno if that particular game uses it. You can sign a guest into Live with your profile, but to deal with games like Bomberman I just keep a few dummy profiles. Most of my roommates made one last year and I have a Japanese Xbox Live Silver account so there is usually a couple profiles to choose from if you need to create one.