The Gamer's Quarter

[helicopterp]

True or not, I wouldn't want to be the one to slog through all the dialogue boxes to test it out.

And yeah, it asks at the beginning if you want the dialogue in Japanese. This would, in theory, make the story less audibly offensive if you don't understand Japanese. I probably should have picked that option.


That being said, shin'nen omedeto gozai-mas five months ago everybody!
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[dhex]

[Shapermc]

[helicopterp]

[Shapermc]

[dhex]

[Shapermc]

[dhex]

well, to take a guess it's a familiar name, it's already from an existing language (or corruption of the existing language i.e. wodan/wotan/odaan/odin) so it makes "sense" and has at least some familiarity to it.

and i guess making shiva in to a woman who shoots ice is a way around hindus complaining that they're maligning their religion. (though to be fair it seems to be making even worse light of a religious symbol. no one's going to complain about wotan being used for silliness - and with odin they usually got the horse with eight legs right and i think dude had an eyepatch. only thing missing were some ravens)
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[dessgeega]

igarashi is worse. i remember seeing "durga" described as a demon in one of his metrovanias and thinking that's like the opposite of true.
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[dhex]

yeah that's like describing krishna as celibate.
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[simplicio]

[Shapermc]

[JasonMoses]

[SuperWes]

[Shapermc]

So, I've played a bit more Etrian Odyssey last night and found out something interesting: the A button acts like a fastforward button if you hold it. I decided to go down to the 4th floor to do some Taking so that I can get the revive potion, and in looking up the info for that I ran across that holding A fast selects attack for all party members and even speeds up combat. You can use it like fastforward because you can hold it only durring combat or only durring action selection. Its nice!
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[captaincabinets]

ACMI in Melbourne are hosting a "best of the IGF". I got to play (for a short time) Aquaria, which frankly I was pretty excited about. Underwater exploration always gets me hot.
It's pretty amazing - the visuals aren't outrageously good but colourful and appropriate, the music could not be more perfect, and it's very easy initially to get lost or go round in circles, which is great. It's just a real shame that there's combat.
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Why am I being boiled into a bright red lobster by this little kid?

[dessgeega]

i felt like it was the sort of game i should reserve judgement on until i have the chance to sit down and play it for a few good hours.

did you get to play everyday shooter?
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[captaincabinets]

i did not. I had limited time (and the place got swarmed by schoolkids at one point), but I'll be going back pretty soon.

I also played gamma brothers, which was cute but honestly a little boring, and armadillo run, which was the incredible machine with the wackiness (aka sense of fun) stripped from it. I guess it would be useful for physics students.
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Why am I being boiled into a bright red lobster by this little kid?

[dessgeega]

finished episode 2 of vanilla doom. yay!
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[helicopterp]

I finished Touch the Dead!

It started out stronger than it ended, though. It went from a fun prison area to a creepy hospital to boringmilitaryindustrialfacility all too quickly. But there was a swamp section in between.

It was still effectively tense most of the time, and I had to think a lot about ammo conservation and effectiveness of my four weapons. The boss battles were fairly simple, but still pretty hard even once you figure out the tricks. I unlocked "furious" mode at the end, which I'll probably try out whenever I go back to the game.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Cycle]

I've been playing Dig Dug Deeper, deciding to start playing the game ApM sent me that I will play the least. This seemed like the easy option since it's an arcade game.

It's not terrible! The graphics are faithful and nice, but they gave the player character an american superchin which is pretty lame. I really enjoy the music, some nice loungey stuff. It's all on the CD so I can listen to it outside the game. Yay! I should upload it to gamemp3s!

Anyway, gameplay is very similar to the original game. You start above the level, which doesn't serve any purpose except to move to the next area of that world, and if a monster should happen to escape the underground, you'll have to take them down up here.

As I said, the rest of the game is virtually identical, however they added new features such as power-ups (rare, you can only get them by killing enemies with style), new enemy types (basically super versions of the ones we've already seen) and more objects to interact with. You can now push boulders which is very handy, and there are also toxic gases that fill in the corridors killing anything it touches, and there is also a rock that explodes, so you can do combos for more points and such. They are nice additions but they could have done more, making the game a little more strategic for those who want to go for the high score. Also, there should have been some kind of water item that floods the level! So yeah, inoffensive, pretty faithful to the original game.

Unfortunately, the controls are stupid. It's all grid based, so when you're just a LITTLE to the right of a block on the grid, and say you press down to dig directly beneath you, the guy will walk to the right and dig there instead. It's a total pain in the ass and pretty stupid! I'm pretty sure the original game didn't have this problem. But yeah, apart from that, it's a pretty decent remake, just completely unnecessary. Shame they didn't do more with it, but I guess they were afraid of angering purists.

Above and below shots:




I wonder what I should play next.
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[dessgeega]

dig dug arrangement
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[dessgeega]

serena blazkowicz blazing her way through hell. episode 3 is vicious, but full of options. the level design opens up a lot, as though you've proven you can make your own way through.

mine eyes can but weep as they bear witness to the majesty . . . the bfg 9000.
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[dessgeega]

i am pleased to report that impossible mission for the nintendo ds is not the worst remake i have ever played. it really adds nothing new besides graphics and sound, though you can play with the original graphics and sound or in a bizarre hybrid that sticks the pixel spy from the original into the bond-like ambience of the new game. the d-pad and buttons are used to do the platforming on the top screen, while the stylus is used to put together the puzzles on the touch screen. it works well enough if you're okay with holding onto the stylus while using the buttons.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

KDIZD is finally out. It's a remake of DooM episode one although It doesn't really feel like episode one. New enemies and additional weapons, ZDoom effects all over the place and a high level of detail in the level design which makes it look more cramped than it is in some areas. There are times when I really felt like I needed more ammo to kill things, maybe that isn't so on lower difficulties. I'm only up to map five so far since I got a little lost in places but otherwise it's quite a good WAD though not something you have to essentially have on your HDD.
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[dessgeega]

this just in: i am too tough for hell to contain.


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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

Oh yeah, KDIZD has the same start to crate time as the original episode one only the walking distance between crate and man is longer.

Should I award it like a half mark or something?
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[Cycle]

I always thought that rating was bullshit, barrels totally don't count as crates.

Also, Impossible Mission DS sounds tight.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

Barrels are a derivative of crates as both can store objects of various types.
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[Lestrade]

Last night I realized how much I love SNES games, so I started a new game of Super Castlevania IV on Wii. I plowed through to Stage VII in one sitting; in probably less than half an hour, too. I didn't die until the later parts of Stave VI, when unfortunately I bit the dust twice.

Playing a game like this and being able to progress through it quickly is really satisfying (I don't think I could do it with Castlevania 3). Since I'm not great at 2D shooters, this will have to do! My only complaint so far is that Stage 3-2 doesn't last long enough; it contains literally my favourite game music of all time.

I was going to maybe nab another NES game or something on Virtual Console, but I have only 400 Wii points! Arrgh!

[Cycle]

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

Perhaps you're hanging around with the wrong crowd.
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[dessgeega]

barrels in doom aren't really crates, though - they're canned explosions. they exist to allow for greater strategy, rather than as an arbitrary container of resources (which are in plain sight in doom).
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[dessgeega]

fuck yeah i just finished impossible mission ds with like three hours left on the clock.

i am taking a shine to this game.
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[Cycle]

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

Barrels in general people.
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[Lestrade]

Well, I finally broke down and got Super Paper Mario. I just played it for about three hours straight, I think! I'm in the Bitlands now. God, I am just so happy with this game. It's refreshing to play a title that's genuinely funny. I don't want to play it too quickly because I want to enjoy it; at the same time, it keeps goading me on with its personality. The whole "gerbil" thing was impressively humorous.

So far I think my favourite little bit of dialogue was the short conversation between Luigi and a pair of Goombas. "Hi there, uh, bad guys. How's it going?" And, "Uh, awkward..."

Why are games like this such a rarity? This is honestly the most "mature" title I've played in years; I'm not even being facetious or anything.

[dessgeega]

maybe if by "mature" you mean "fluent" - fluent in the tropes of jrpgs. the translation staff (one of whom i met) is clearly very familiar with the conventions of jrpgs, and the script is very self-aware, constantly making jabs that only an audience that was equally familiar would get. a string of aggressive wink-winks nudge-nudges really isn't my definition of maturity: i actually find the script tedious and juvenile. but you're only up to the bitlands, which is admittedly the game's high point (as long as you get the joke).

tonight i replayed four of the episodes of kirby super star. that game has so many great ideas; it's sort of a codex of the platforming game. but as far as i'm concerned, this is the reason why it's the best-designed game in the kirby series: in other kirby games, if you're running along at high speed, and you press the attack button, kirby will come to a dead stop as he performs whatever static attack animation he's equipped with. in super star, he will rush forward using a charging version of the attack, maintaining the speed and flow of the game. in other kirby games, the problem is compounded by the fact that many of kirby's abilities and combinations (which was a terrible idea from the start) just aren't very useful or mobile. in super star all of kirby's abilities are versatile and contextual.

i played umihara after that. i like to say it's one of the most perfect games i've ever played, by which i mean that everything about it feels so deliberate. there's not anything in or about the game that isn't necessary. i still like the superfami game better than the playstation one, partly because of its consistant, understated visuals. and partly because it just seems better suited to the simpler hardware.
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[Lestrade]

[Cycle]

Lestrade! NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo!

I don't really explain myself on the internet anymore, too. It's just too much hassle and a waste of time, especially when the majority of the time it's like talking to a brick wall. I walk away as soon as I can see things aren't heading into a useful area of discussion.
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[dessgeega]

[Harveyjames]

[dongle]

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

I bought Labyrinth not two hours ago and went through all the courses. Now I have to go back and beat all my times hellafast.

Fun, Fun, FUN!
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[antitype]

So, contrary to all the ambivalence I've encountered I'm really enjoying Doom 3!

http://community.livejournal.com/dailyvideogame/72461.html

Anyone still using LJ, please feel welcome to join up.
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antitype.livejournal.com | last.fm

[aerisdead]

[dhex]

doom 3 would be a really great game if there were no enemies.

i mean, the engine is nice (indoors only) and would make a great system shock esque game (because of the insane darkness). but sadly that's not what happened.
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[antitype]

See, my feelings are exactly the opposite. I was a little bit afraid that it was going to try to be a System Shock sort of game at the beginning, when the PDA was introduced and I thought I might get stuck with the task of mopping up the bathroom or something. Hell breaks loose in pretty awesome fashion, though, and though I'll admit I've wished for a moment of respite beyond checking my PDA in some room for 10 seconds at a time, I really appreciate the relentless pacing. It begins to feel like a desperate fight at times — I've made it through end-stage battles with pinkies and imps with 2 health, and when I stepped into that airlock I shook my head in disbelief. It's fucking Doom, and it's brutal.

I think it looks gorgeous outside, too.
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antitype.livejournal.com | last.fm

[dhex]

the monster closet thing wears thin (actually the only place i remember it being really well done is when you pick up the chainsaw. it was appropriate then.)
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[antitype]

I don't entirely disagree, but I think the flashlight toggling keeps it engaging (and creepy).
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antitype.livejournal.com | last.fm