Now Loading Update (10.24.2006) Ah... It's nice to have the old banner back isn't it? The agenda for today's update is: Demos, Some Left Overs and Closing Out. We aren't waiting for anything, so let's go! Demos During the course of Tony Hawk Week, I played a few demos that I should talk about. First was the Guitar Hero II OPM demo, it's a pretty cool demo, but, I pretty much jumped right to hard and beat all the songs on my first try, but the first time you see a three button cord you'll flinch, trust me. The four songs where pretty diverse and fun to play, but, I can't wait for the full game. I just don't think you could get away with playing the demo over and over until the full game comes out November 7th. The second demo that I played was for Lumines Live! and yes that exclimation point is part of game's title. It was pretty cool, but I'm glad that I didn't spend 1200 points on it though. I kind liked the puzzle mode the best, but the main game seemed neat. Finally, I downloaded the trial version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and have been sitting on the fence about if I should buy it or not. I actually bought 1250 more points and was going to spend them on Lumines, but I'm not sure I want to spend 800 points on UMK3 either. I don't really like fighting games that much and don't play that much mulit-player games and the CPU AI seems kind of cheap. I'm going to probably wait on the next Arcade release before I decide if UMK3 will be one to buy. OMG! I thought Tony Hawk Week was over, well it is, but there are a few kind of silly ommissions that I really should note. - I forgot to mention that you can ride BMX bikes in American Wasteland, but because the controls are different than riding the skateboard going between both is really confusing, besides the bikes aren't that great anyways. - In Underground 2, they decided to add multiple voices for your character. 4 male voices and 2 female voices... The problem is that your character has only 3 major lines in the whole game. While Tony and Bam steal the show, you only get to hear your character when he falls, gets mad or swaps in and out as the main skater. Extra voice types seem a bit redundant. - In the THPS 4 article, I forgot to mention that the flatland tricks where moved to manual combos instead of being special tricks as in THPS 3. - I also wanted to mention that while THPS 4 has some of the worst level design, THUG 1 has some of the most automatic (aka robotic) levels in the whole series. Pretty much each level has a line that will take you in circles making scoring combos easier. I also forgot to mention the grind combo glitch, where if you activate a grind combo (example: Darkslide: down-right, down-right, grind) your rail balance would be reset to normal each time. I'm pretty sure there are more I missed, but when you write stream of though like I tend to do, sometimes smaller details slip through the cracks (so to speak). I was also going to post those screens of my early success on the THP 8 demo leaderboards, but I will probably save that for NLU Weekly #9. I promise this will be the last time I mention Tony Hawk for awhile. Closing Out I don't know if there will be much to talk about this week, but I will try to have at least NLU Weekly #9 (which I will try to make more "weekly"). Maybe I will trying playing Enchanted Arms again or get back into Oblivion or try and finish Dead Rising or something. Next week is Final Fantasy XII and I'm looking forward to that, which is what the next big coverage will be about. Flawless Victory! Loading Complete! POSTED ON OCTOBER 24, 2006