The Gamer's Quarter

[helicopterp]

[internisus]

I don't feel like playing any of the games that I am in the middle of:

MGS3: Subsistence
FFXII
Chibi Robo
Godhand
Lego Star Wars 2

Instead, I think I will play either:

Myst
Planescape: Torment
Random IF

or watch a movie or read a book.

[OtakupunkX]

If you haven't played through MGS3 before I strongly reccomend that you finish Subsistence. You will probably like it, I promise.
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[internisus]

I have; 3 times, actually. That's the only reason I'm a little bored. Also, I'm in the caves, which are inherently boring if you've played before. The camera was the main reason I bought Subsistence, and I'm pretty disappointed with it. A behind-the-shoulder view like RE4 would have been superb, but this feels way too loose. It's definitely better than the original overhead, but it doesn't help much in the presentation of the landscape or the enemies in your surroundings.

[OtakupunkX]

I really, really hated the camera when it came time for that motorcycle sequence...
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[internisus]

oh no =(


I fucking wish Kojima would take his cinematic flair and pay attention to something other than the goddamn cutscenes.

[OtakupunkX]

Someone somewhere once compared Kojima and his videogames to someone who grew up wanting to make fire trucks but ended up working at a toy fire truck factory. It might have even been someone on this forum, but I can't, for the life of me, remember who it was.
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[internisus]

That works for me, but the fact that his technique has not adapted to his line of work just means that he hasn't grown up at all. He hasn't accepted the difference between his dream and his life. I hope MGS4 shows some improvement.

[dessgeega]

[internisus]

That's funny, because there was recently a thread on IC in which (startlingly, for me) everyone and his mother went off about how he steals everything for his writing and gets other people to do work for him. So you took it from him, but maybe he took it from you first in a recurring time paradox!

[dessgeega]

i think the joke is that sometimes when he needed to research some fact for an article he was writing he would start a thread and casually pose a question to the forum, like "what was the first game to feature X?"

(the answer of course being megaman x, ho ho.)

he's a sly one, that john szczepaniak.
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[OtakupunkX]

He occasionally pops up on Junker HQ from time to time to ask for help on articles (mainly for Retro Gamer, I've noticed that he's in there a lot lately... in fact, it was almost like he wrote half of the whole last issue), but he does it in a much more blatant way now. I run into him on Assembler sometimes too but I haven't been on there in awhile.
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[simplicio]

[Cycle]

[dhex]

extraction point.

ever want to play a game that was mostly the bank scene from the matrix + a little bit of the ring? that was the first fear. this expansion pack seems to swap those two modes.

i'm trying to save it for tiny writing breaks as i need them.
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[Harveyjames]

[how do you delete posts on this forum?]

[OtakupunkX]

[Pijaibros]

I'm pretty sure it was Fisher Price Firehouse Rescue.

You go around a maze-like city , stop at the house that is flashing and on fire and you put up your little ladder and try to get all the people and their pets down. You then roll back to your little firehouse and await for the next rescue.

You get promoted from firefighter to chief along the way.

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

Finished with ROTT, finding all the secret levels and the D I P balls along the way which is a first for me (even found Scott's Mystical Head). So it's on to the expansion, Extreme Rist Of The Triad which has completely brilliant level design. I'm really quite impressed with it, moreso than the last time I played through it which was too long to remember. It's kind of like Super Mario Bros. 2 to Super Mario Bros but does a lot of ROTT-style silly things as a companion to the difficulty, like one of the levels putting a key in the middle of a bunch of Ballistikraft stacked on top of each other and another where you fight two copies of the boss at the same time, and the part where you have to choose the correct exit or it sends you back a level or two just to fuck with you. And some cool things with boulders.
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[dessgeega]

so i have rolling thunder 2, finally! it didn't take me that long to one-life to stage 5. the new, console-exclusive stages are pretty neat so far, and are definitely in the spirit of the game. (the robot that you fight with a flamethrower is pretty great, since you need to be careful of its direction of fire and also of its proximity to yourself once you kill it.) the enemies are robot crabs? what?

lord monarch still hasn't arrived from japan, and now i wish i'd paid the extra money to insure it.

i found time to meddle with some roms earlier, too. dashin' desperados is a pretty great two-player racing platformer if you're willing to look past the ludicrous sexism. (that green kidnaps her every few single-player stages but she still welcomes his affections means, i guess, that she enjoys abduction role-play?) what i remember being awesome about the game is the plethora of minigames that could be unlocked with passwords. looking online, though, i've only been able to find two of these. the internet has failed me.

also: dyna brothers 2! a realtime dinosaur strategy game where you need to balance an ecosystem of herbivores, carnivores, etc. it reminds me of both simlife and lord monarch. it's a bit much for me to get a handle on at the moment, though. maybe i should start with dyna brothers 1, but the sprites in the sequel just emote so well! especially the bald, blue, monacled and handlebar-mustachioed, ass-slapping villian.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

[dhex]

[Lackey]

Some people do. That game's not great though. Pretty, but very by the book, which is hugely disappointing.

Dyna brothers sounds cool though.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[dessgeega]

now that i've played through the tutorial maps of dyna brothers 2, i feel like i have a handle on how it works. basically, you use rain to make more food for your herbivores to eat to provide more dino power to eventually be able to introduce carnivores to eat your enemies. i like it because, similiar to lord monarch, most of the time your dinos just hang out and eat food and have dino babies, and you mostly watch, using rain at the appropriate times to expand your territory, and occasionally investing in a new lifeform. you do have the ability to possess an individual dino and lead it somewhere, but for the most part micromanagement is next to none, and i like that. and wow the animations are adorable. the enemy fast-meat-eating type is a little alien ninja. it's great.
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[dessgeega]

also, wagyan land. a famicom namco(t) flat-color platformer based around the ice beam mechanic from metroid. but the best part is the bosses, who glide menacingly onto the screen, circle you while sinister music plays, and challenge you to a deadly game of memory match or, even better, the word chain game!

there are a bunch of tiles with different pictures. your opponent picks one and says its name: "ear". then you find one whose name starts with the last letter in the previous word: "radio". then your opponent picks the boar and says "oinker" and you go "what". the memory match isn't as fantastic, but it's nice the way your opponent will react differently to a tile whether it's been seen before or whether its match has and also will comment if you manage to get lucky and pull up a match you havn't seen before.

now die!!


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[TheRumblefish]

I'm playing Cold Fear, because I never finished it, and attempting to play through the second scenario in Deep Labryinth.

Animal Crossing is good fun. Again.
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[dark steve]

I finished FFXII, with 58 hours on my clock. It was just bit anticlimactic, what with some of the more ridiculous marks and things i'd been working on previously. I'm a little surprised at how short the mandatory part of the game is. I probably could have finished it in 45 had I rushed on through the first time, and with some foreknowledge and really superior planning, I bet I could take it on in 35-40 now.

Great game, though.
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[Scratchmonkey]

Dark Steve I am currently just under double that amount of time and I haven't gotten to Pharos yet.

RPGs really bring out the OCD in me, it's a good thing that I don't play many of them.

[Pijaibros]

I am on the last leg of FFXII, but 4 marks just opened up after the Pharos.

The Ixion, Bahamut King, Pylraster, and Seer.

I've only fought the Pylraster so far. That was the hardest Mark I've had to do so far. It goes crazy when it's HP gets to critical levels. I had 3 gameovers before I landed on a strategy that was able to keep me alive. I'm imagining the Bahamut King to be similar to this.

I am going to get Ixion and the Seer though since they seem to be near enough to each other that I could knock that out of the way faster.

At just over 100 hours, it;s getting real hard to motivate myself to do this. I almost just want to go ahead and finish the game I've been playing so long.

[dessgeega]

i have been playing dyna brothers 2.

also! uncharted waters: new horizons, for some reason. i realized that "sid meier's pirates!" is actually pretty boring and started playing new horizons as a pirate instead. it is a pretty hard game to play without a manual! it's intimidating at first but i think i'm starting to get the hang of it.
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[Dracko]

[dark steve]

[player 2]

[Lackey]

I'm playing Dyna Brothers 2 now. I enjoy this high level management strategy. I'm still puzzled by a few of the menu options but by and large it's understandable.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[player 2]

Oh Fuck Me

I was playing Zelda on my Wii while admiring the nifty quicksave feature. I was playing it for quite a while. I had 11 hearts, the blue ring, the power bracelet, and had finished the first 4 dungeons (while working hard on the 6th dungeon. Where is the 5th dungeon anyways?). Then I thought:

"I wonder what the retry button does?"

Well, guys, I just reset my entire game of Zelda. Fuck.

The moral of the lesson is: do not depend on the Wii's autosave if you are playing Zelda. Thanks.
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Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[JasonMoses]

I think the moral of the story is to save your game sometime between the 1st and 4th dungeons of Zelda.

I'm so sorry, though. I'm pretty sure I would just stop playing if that happened to me.

[dessgeega]

[Dracko]

Oh, the level with the shotgun. I never bothered to watch the cutscenes, but that's some Sonic the Hedgehog spin there.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dessgeega]

showing gimdo actually leaving on the submarine is a nice touch. as is the between-stage explanation of why you're suddenly in giza.

in other news (new horizons), i am becoming the terror of the seas. okay, i've only attacked two merchant fleets so far. the gold i made from looting the more recent fleet and selling the ships i captured allowed me to finally replace the crew i lost to the spanish navy. my ship is moving at a decent clip again. the plot is actually keeping pace with me, which is impressive. it can be hard to do plot in a go-anywhere-do-whatever kind of game, though your choice of protagonist does guide your path a bit.
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[Pijaibros]

[Karoshi]

I played a bit of Radilgy before work today.
A friend of mine, visiting for the weekend, gave it a try. It seems like an ideal game to introduce casual players to curtain shooters. It's not as sloppy as Chaos Field, yet not as refined as (insert Cave title). And not since Viewpoint has pseudo-West Coast house music fit a shooter so well!

[Lasa]

I tried playing Saga Frontier yesterday and realized that the battle system doesn't work.
I mean that from a technical stand point and not a philosophical one.
I'm kind of sad about that.

[UltraWii]

Duke it out in DC(Duke Nukem 3d Atomic Add-On)
Those bloody secret levels are insanely hard to find...

Zelda: TP
Just started on the Ice dungeon...I say it was fun to snowboard down the hill

Call Of Duty 3
I think i'm close to the end..not quite sure though...

Also am i the only one who thinks in TP the 2nd dungeon was insanely hard?

[Slonie]

I'm a exactly 4 hours into Zelda: TP and I'm pretty sure that by everyone's reports I'm still in the "sucky part." Actually I just hit the Forest Temple. Yeah, I'm slow. I'm pretty sure I'd be further if I didn't spend so much time wondering what to do in the town earlier.

Fun times though! Gunstar Heroes is also in the house. Rockin.
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-Slonie

[dhex]

[Cycle]

[silentmatt]

Hm... I honestly didn't think the beginning was that bad. Sure, it was kind of boring but it is just setting up the pieces. Maybe it is because all of the chess I've been playing / Carnivale I've been watching, but slow beginnings aren't necessary a bad thing in my book.

It got you acquainted to the world, had a few fun little sidequests, introduced some characters... I don't see the problem.

Even the bug hunts... I would have hated them IF they hadn't provided a map of where the bugs where. But with that map, it was kind of fun finding them - especially the ones which weren't exactly obvious. Meh.
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PSN: Twitch_City ||| Wii: 8083 5371 5767 6700
"Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient."

[Pijaibros]

Last Night, I started playing Scurge: Hive. I chose to play this on my GBAPlayer after getting through the intro on my way back from work. I enjoy the fact that I can pick languages upon start-up. It's great playing things in other languages that I can actually read and interpret as opposed to the usual kanji I can't make heads or tails out of. More games should include language selections outside of Japanese or English on start-up.

So far I really enjoy the grappling hook since I can just throw it out there without having to stop and break my momentum. Suddenly I have this giant block or enemy that I can just fling in front of anyone to act as a temporary shield and be able to solve those switch puzzles without having to stop and dwell on the fact that I'm dealing with a friggin switch puzzle. The Megaman style of certain weapons working real well against some types enemies while powering up others if not careful keeps me paying attention.

I like Joanna's hair. Long, colorful, and flowing. Swirling around her in mid-jump. It makes me want to play the Shantae: Advance I've been looking forward to for far too many years.

Playing this on the GBAPlayer is a much better experience. The standard Wavebird analog lends itself real well to isometric movement. Tearing around Planet Inos became even easier when sitting on the couch. Usually the standard GC is more of a pain for GBA games. This is a first!

I am liking this. I enjoy the Metroid Fusion-style setting. About time someone did something with this since Nintendo is content with rehashing the past. I enjoy the faster pace this game encourages with it's pseudo-time limit mechanic. The aggressive enemies and frantic action, nifty bosses, and very catchy music. So far this has me thinking more "Crystalis in space" than "Metroid rip-off" as others have suggested. I'm gonna keep my eye on Orbital. First Racing Gears Advance and now Scurge. Good show.

[dessgeega]

i played assault suits leynos, up to the fourth stage. it's a bit of a toughie, mostly because i keep wanting it to control like valkan, but the mega drive doesn't have enough buttons. it made me realize that valkan is probably the first game i've ever encountered that actually makes use of the ludicrous button-count of the super famicom controller.

my mother took the day off and i spent a few hours playing zelda on her wii.

i'm trying to work up to replaying trinity and some other if (possibly curses and a change in the weather).
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[the drunken samurai]

yesterday i spent a few hours playing the PC version of bloodrayne. its fun chopping up nazis to pieces,but the level design is so bad i kept getting lost very often,everything looks the same