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the tell us about the games you are playing thread
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friedchicken
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 8:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
Castlevania: Dracula X Collection


I had to come back to visit TGQ to see what you thought about it Shaper. All great points, I need to think on it. It's a very, very good game to begin with, and I was really happy that the remake didn't break it.
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Shapermc
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 9:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

friedchicken wrote:
I had to come back to visit TGQ to see what you thought about it Shaper.

You shouldn't just visit! You should stay.
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 10:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cycle wrote:
kirkjerk wrote:
Guess I'm not in love w/ the genre right now. The whole "search every corpse and closed item for loot" thing is just a puddle of meh.

That's a pretty standard FPS/RPG convention, unfortunately.

I don't mind loot/ammo drops ala Halo, but searching seems like busy work.

I wonder if it strikes the same chords as, say, slot machines, which don't do a thing for me either (I don't get excited about the prospect of Maybe THIS Time, I just get anxious about "how much money am I grinding through?" and "is this just like a big skinner box?")

I guess some of the "problem" was my own attitude and preconceived notions... with the exception of weapon drops in games like Halo, I'm used to most items in a game having a distinct purpose. Having a great deal of mildly useful stuff to pick through and add to my inventory, eh, it's right down there with "stealth" and "attribute management" in gameplay mechanics that don't do a lot for me.

The whole RPG stats and inventory thing in general; I guess I haven't built up the trust that a well designed stat/inventory system will be flexible, and I should be able to suss out a reasonable strategy and even balance it to my style and preferences. Instead, I always assume there's some Dominant Strategy lurking about that I don't know about, and maybe if I don't figure it out I'm going to get stuck within the game.

IMy gaming buddy and I have picked up Mercenaries, a repeat for me. Annoying freezing on the 360 emulation, exacerbated by the gratuitous lack of an autosave. Now, this game has a "more than one way to do a mission" vibe that I really dig, much like with GTA games.
On the surface, I guess that should be similar to "more then one to build a character" vibe, but it's not. I'm going to blame Infocom, especially Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where failing to do something early on would screw you later, and the puzzles were so difficult that you could go through and never realize your hopeless state.
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friedchicken
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 11:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
friedchicken wrote:
I had to come back to visit TGQ to see what you thought about it Shaper.

You shouldn't just visit! You should stay.


Okay.

So then, what am I playing? Disgaea PSP, Zelda Phantom Hourglass, Arcana Heart, and World Heroes Gorgeous! Did anyone else pick up Arcana Heart? It makes me yearn for the old days of 2D fighting.
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Cycle
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 11:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

shaper my friend bought me shadowrun so i could play with him just fyi
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 9:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So what's this Shadowrun I keep hearing about every not and again?
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 2:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wrote up some stuff about the game here.

Also, I saw that lastnight Cycle. I was in the middle of "serious business" and couldn't join. I'll defiantly play with you sometime though. I have some friends I can bring in on it too. let me know when you're planning on being online.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 3:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

360, only? Flooooorp. All these great games are on 360, or Wii. Friggin' money, why do you curse me so!
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 4:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, its for 360 and Vista, and they work cross platform very elegantly!
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 5:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I played it a little last night, i did all the training and it looks like it will be a while before I find a class I like, right now I'm sticking with Troll. Anyway the first few games I played were on that map in the clouds which is awesome map. I kept GUSHING people off the edge, saving me having to destory their bodies, had a shotgun which made short work of most people and, that uuhh... aimy tech that's quite good and experiment with a second spell. Was a lot of fun.

The second map I played was that slum level which I don't really like much at all, didn't help that the other peoples knew the spells and tech a little TOO WELL and kept messing my face up ten seconds after I spawned. Became a pain in the ass eventually and I quit to do something else.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 10, 2007 6:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i wrote a little about bomb jack, which i play every time i visit the sunnyvale golf center arcade. i was there this past week, and discovered - right below it on the 100-in-1 multi-cab - that there's a sequel, bomb jack twin. bomb jack twin has two-player play and gorgeous animation, and is also much faster.

i also played bubble bobble, rampage, devil crush and AIR FORTRESS with my slut.

when i got back to new york, my trax cart was waiting, and i played the game at its original resolution for the first time. it is perfect for its screen size..
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Shapermc
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 3:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cycle wrote:
Anyway the first few games I played were on that map in the clouds which is awesome map.

Ugh, I hate that map. Basically if you have a couple of humans with gliders and sniper rifles they can lock down the top ring and kill anything that comes up within seconds.

Anyways, yeah, you're at a pretty big disadvantage not knowing the maps. I recommend sticking with troll for a while and just getting use to everything he can do. The first thing you should ALWAYS buy with a troll is a tree of life (first round, every game) because a troll without a tree is a dead troll.

Also, Smart Link (auto-aim with extra zoom for all the weapons) is sort of a double edged sword. You will never hit your team with friendly fire (well, outside of grenades) and you will get extra magnetism on your reticule, and you will be more accurate with the exceptionally unaccurate weapons by zooming in (the SMG and the Minigun) BUT! You act like a red beacon lighthouse pointing out your position to the enemy. I recommend using this only if you plan on being a tank with a minigun.

If you're looking for something different on the troll I highly recommend Wired Reflexes. Your standard movement speed becomes that of a human, and if you activate it for a speed burst you can run just slightly faster than an elf. When using this I like to have a katana and shotgun for close range fucking-up-of-the-enemy. Elfs and dwarfs will die in 1-2 katana hits from a troll, Humans in 2-3 hit, and trolls will go down in 3-4 hits. The trolls strength makes the katana _exceptionally_ powerful, and the extra mobility of WR makes it so that you're actually able to catch people and hurt them with it.

One final recommendation (something I never got use to because I ignored it for so long, but would have been exceptionally helpful) is Smoke. If you're in a very heavy firefight and the troll is fully hardened you're going to slow down to a crawl. Smoke will allow you to get all of your speed back and while smoked you won't take any damage. If you're taking heavy fire and near dead it's best to hit smoke, then find a tree and heal up.

And, it's not a horrible idea to spend a little time in some bot matches off-line to learn the maps. The level design in the game is amazing and you'll constantly find new ways to get from place to place and where to take cover. The game's been out for like 6 months now though and most people have a good idea of the level layouts now, and it will take a few rounds before you get most of them. Don't forget to use the OpSec commands (up on the Dpad) so that you can tell other people on your team where enemies are w/out knowing all the names and places on a map. If you hear OpSec from another person on your team, just aim for the yellow eye icon to back them up.

I could go on like this for a long time. I'm just going to stop though.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

for a nintendo genre piece with a franchise slapped on it, kirby's block ball adds some pretty neat stuff to the arkanoid model: differently-shaped blocks, multiple paddles, a "charge shot" which (when pulled off successfully) allows the ball to destroy multiple-hit blocks in a single hit. most interestingly, to compensate for the fact that the gameboy doesn't have analog controls (since playing this kind of game with fixed speed is difficult), the speed of the paddles is relative to the ball's distance from them. that's smart.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 11:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

air fortress has the best game over countdown ever. and it's by hal laboratory.
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Cycle
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 1:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

shaper is it normal to have to wait for like an hour before you have enough players to play shadowrun

it was super quick when I first got it, maybe it's my router being a bitch again. I need to replace that hussy this week!
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Shapermc
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 1:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cycle wrote:
shaper is it normal to have to wait for like an hour before you have enough players to play shadowrun

It shouldn't take more than a few seconds to get enough people together to get started. The game does try to connect to the "best connection" and if the lag is too high it won't connect you. I'm sure there just a general drop in the amount of people playing too.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 2:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been trying to plow through the more "significant" games in the PS2 library, before my friend moves out and takes the console with him.

Playing Metal Gear Solid 2 now, which is interesting enough, but pretty annoying. The game is self negating in a way that most aren't, but it's hard to say whether this is cool and progressive or lame and juvenile. Probably a bit of both, leaning more toward the latter end. At least the nude Raiden sequence is quite remarkable.

Ico, my previous conquest, was actually much better than I had anticipated. The topic has been beaten to death, here and elsewhere, but I wanted to mention that, the game is more or less what I had expected a polygonal reinterpretation of the Prince of Persia series would be like.

Anyway, not sure what's next on the list. Maybe Shadow of the Colossus.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 2:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i've been playing metal max returns, freshly fan-translated by aeon genesis. despite the trappings of a superfamicom jrpg (and that includes lots of pretty sprites), this is a mercenary adventure game with next to no hand-holding.

to give you some idea of where i am (and how the game plays), i just recruited a mechanic, rented a truck for him to drive around in, and hunted down a mutant piranha man to collect a bounty. then i found a giant cannon that blocked my way north, because my cannons simply couldn't penetrate its armor. now it looks like i'm going to have to explore a mysterious factory on foot.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 3:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mr Mustache wrote:
Anyway, not sure what's next on the list. Maybe Shadow of the Colossus.

In theory, I love SotC. In practice I hate it-- its find-the-handhold gameplay made it really tough to get into, especially after the interface grace of Ico.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 3:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mr Mustache wrote:
Anyway, not sure what's next on the list.

Don't forget Guitaroo Man.

Also, Silent Hill 2 if you haven't played it on anything else yet.
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Mr Mustache
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 12:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
Mr Mustache wrote:
Anyway, not sure what's next on the list.

Don't forget Guitaroo Man.

Also, Silent Hill 2 if you haven't played it on anything else yet.


Well, we'll see, I'm trying not to spend too much money on a console I won't have regular access to, so I'm trying to play games we already own.

Silent Hill 2 is definitely on the list though, mostly because of how y'all go one about it.
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 12:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just set my Wii back up for the first time since I moved about 4 months ago (wow, tons of new Mii's!), just in time to start playing Super Mario Galaxy.

Saying it makes me feel like the king of all Mario dorks, but the game sure does have quite a bit of majesty to it, what with all the flying from planet to planet. It's interesting that it economizes on stages by reusing them while adding new goals, just like in Mario 64 and Sunshine, but it seems like the total number of stages is much greater than either of those.

I'm still hoping for some of the bowel-clenching, fall into oblivion if you miss a perfectly timed jump style bonus levels a la Sunshine. They were the best part of a fairly mediocre game.
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 6:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Carcosenne or whatever is free tomorrow! Cool! Saves me having to buy a game that I'm worried no one plays anymore.
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 6:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i am always up for some carcassonne. now everyone will have it!
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 7:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow! I don't think there's been a better time for my roommate to randomly walk in with an xbox 360!
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 9:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

During the day I had a hankering for some mercenaries.
I'd been playing it hand-off style, but my co-conspirator didn't seem to be digging it so I thought I'd take a look at it on my own...couldn't find the disk.

But I found some stuff I might want to try hand-off style, stuff that I picked up, didn't grab me, but I think are probably good enough games that they're worth a second shot: Shadow of the Colossus, God of War.

I also refound my Raiden Project disk... I keep meaning to get back to it.

I finally got the unlimited credits cheat to work. And I took on Raiden 2.

I might be wussing out, put it on easiest setting, unlimited continues. But I gotta say, I think it really never regains the peak of the first level, with the little tanks roaming around and those giant walkers.

I then tried Raiden. It might be a better game, at least I like how it handles the pesky air kamikaze guys a bit more. (Raiden 2's plasma gun is a lot of fun though) But it kicked my ass, since its "continue" has only like 2 or 3 checkpoints per level. So I didn't finish that.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 11:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i tried yoshi's island ds. this game has no identity. it's only interested in doing what the original yoshi's island does, but since it's a sequel now there are two screens, more babies, two burt the bashfuls instead of one. and an unnecessary jump button, presumably just because baby mario needed an ability. this one is counter-productive because it's mapped to the "tongue" button: while in the original super mario bros., the run button might cause you to unintentionally throw a fireball, that is an action that costs no time; extending yoshi's tongue brings him to a halt. it's the equivalent button, but by no means an equivalent function.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 5:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i know i've said it before here: yoshi's island ds is a terrible game.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 6:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I spent the night playing Super Mario Galaxy. I do a lot of backflips when I meant to long jump. I am similarly bothered by Mario's loss of the "diving lunge" he'd perform if you hit B when he's running or leaping.

This is the first game I've ever played where I thought the wall-jumps were too easy. I'm disappointed in myself for feeling that way, but there's nothing I can do about my own emotional response to such sloppy-looking jumps.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 12:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been playing Vangers and Pathologic recently which is numbing my mind to language.

Pathologic is actually more coherent than I'd come to expect and even though the dialogue reads like a flowery, grammatical Babelfish I think I actually know what's going on. The atmosphere of doom is already oppressive and I'm only on the third day. I like most of what is happening in this game, although largely it's just walking and talking to people in the right order to progress the plot. This is complicated by having to watch out for how hungry, diseased and tired you are. Incidentally Ice-pick lodge's new game [url="http://www.ndgames.ru/catalogue/?tension"]Tension[/url] looks completely bizarre. This is the only thing I've seen written about it in English, although I've watched a gameplay video and it seems to feature the player painting on the screen with the mouse which makes objects change colours and behave differently. Dating sim elements (?) were completely absent. It actually just looked like a bunch of separate set pieces or boss fights.

Vangers I'm checking out mostly for the strange visuals. The entire world is a kind of height map (voxels, they say) so shadows are all cast from individual pixels and the terrain is all destructible. It looks kind of like plasticine or one of those needle bed things you can push your hand into. In practice the game is somewhat impenetrable (actually not that much if you're patient and interest) and very difficult because I keep getting stuck in little ditches on the terrain which are not at all obvious from the top down view. To help with this all the vehicles have a jump button, which in most cases just boots you off in a random direction. So in races you might be in first place, get stuck in a hole, then accidentally launch yourself into a river. I enjoy the strange and only partially translated text though, it completely inundates you with the made-up terminology of the game.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 2:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just picked up Contra 4 and had a quick session with it. Some brief observations:

1) It is hard, but I'm not sure if it is in a good way or not. Shit comes at you from both screens, something which I'm finding hard to adapt to. Also, gun turrets and bullets can be kind of hard to see on the tiny screen. If I can adapt to these challenges it may still turn out to be the good kind of hard.

2) It feels slower paced than Hard Corps, my favorite game in the series. Maybe if you like the NES games this will be a positive for you.

3) Contra and Super C are supposedly unlockable, but I don't know how.

4) There are four playable characters but I think the differences are merely cosmetic.

5) I haven't even completed the Jungle level yet. There are mid-stage continue points though, and I've gotten to the 2nd or 3rd one of those.

Now I must put my DS away and get back to work. Anybody else picking this up today?

EDIT: I also find using the grappling hook a bit awkward(it is mapped to the X button).


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PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 2:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

cycle is in the future for most of us so carcassone isnt free until thursday
and its free thursday and friday

DONT LET THE FUTURE FOOL YOU
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 11:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Orcs & Elves came out today so I went and bought me that. It's hella old school, like, only being able to move one step at a time and only being able to turn in ninety degree intervals old school. It's a pretty sweet game and looks quite nice on the DS screens, more nice than it's just a step or two above Wolfenstein 3D engine lets on. More on it later after I redo stage three as I quit before I got killed, unless someone shares theirs first.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I found a poor little TV de Advance sitting dejectedly on the floor in the corner of a Radio Shack, so I took it home. The Engrishy instructions got in the way with mismatched captions, etc., but installation is simple and solderless and the picture quality is quite nice. Six dollars well spent!

I'm using that to play Kirby Tilt 'n Tumble, which is otherwise pretty much unplayable on the GBA's dim, reflective screen. (It would probably be better on an SP, but controls would be reversed.) It's still very difficult -- falling off the edge of a platform causes you to instantly lose a life and restart at the last checkpoint -- but there's lots of interesting stuff going on here. The time limit is tight enough to keep you moving along, and health and time powerups can be converted to stars (points, essentially) and back, providing a neat risk/reward system. The tilt sensor occasionally feels oversensitive, which is frustrating given that the game is already pretty punishing. But I'm still enjoying it a lot.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 2:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

neves is a classy and fabulous little tangram puzzle game for the ds.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 4:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

oh, and there's also a new cooking mama on the ds. i can't tell how it's different from the original other than having more obnoxious visual design and mama's terrible but endearing mangled english.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 3:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i have a soft spot for terrible (but endearing) mangled english. I work for a Chinese couple..!

I've been playing a lot of City of Heroes and Eternal Darkness lately (sometimes, even at the same time!)

City of Heroes is one of the only MMORPGs that I've vowed to stick with through to the end, and this time I'm really serious, for real. It's very fast-paced and rewards crazy people with crazy ideas for superheroes by making crazy combinations work really well. The game has also become packaged amazing since Jack Emmert left the head design position to Matt Millar.

Eternal Darkness has great atmosphere and an approach to combat that evokes pre-4 Silent Hill games, but in such a way that doesn't feel like it's putting your balls in a vice every time you get into a fight. By which I mean, the combat in ED is comfortable, but cool. Weapons clang off of nearby obstacles, so you need to be sure you have room to fight - and often the game knows this and puts you in cramped quarters full of monsters, as if it's saying "what do you do, hotshot?!"
I'm also digging its magic system. Each spell has one of three deity alignments, and they interact in a rock-paper-scissors sort of configuration in most cases (Xel'lotath enemies take more damage from Cha'turggha aligned spells, who takes more damage from Ulyaoth, etc) excepting the restorative and summon spells - which heal an aspect of you or summon a different flavour of monster based on the alignment you implement.
Plus, the game apparently has replayability! I'm only on my first playthrough, but I tagged Xel'lotath in the very beginning, which is my crash course on taking massive sanity damage as Xel'lotath is the "i destroy your sanity" bitch from beyond.

The magic system allows for abusive approaches to combat. There's a "damage field" spell that creates an injuring forcefield that, if you're clever, you can trap monsters in and beat on them at your convenience. You can also wait just inside it for their approach, and slap them around in perfect safety. The downside: spells take some time to cast, so you can be easily interrupted while creating your nexus of death. Upside: most of the characters you play as are very skilled at RUNNING AWAY, and so you're usually able to get enough distance to get your mojo going.

tl;dr: video games are cool, esp. when licenseless fake cthulhu is involved.

ps: thanks to a professor of mine i cannot say, think, or write the word mojo without thinking of the mohorovicic boundary, where the earth's crust gets all plasticky right before the mantle. thanks a lot, asshole.
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Cossix
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Joined: 14 Nov 2007
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I tried to play Killer 7 yesterday because I haven't played it ever (I'm deprived) but disc 1 is missing and Daphny doesn't know where it is and I checked all the cases so now I have to go out and buy it AGAIN. Alas.
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Ketch
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 4:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cossix wrote:
I tried to play Killer 7 yesterday because I haven't played it ever (I'm deprived) but disc 1 is missing and Daphny doesn't know where it is and I checked all the cases so now I have to go out and buy it AGAIN. Alas.


That's what happens at the end of Eternal Darkness. Wink
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sediment
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 5:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

OMG SPOILARS Sad
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daphaknee
just enemies now
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 7:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i have ten stars in mario galaxy! i just got it today! im so happy! this platformin gis amazing! i love confusing the camera/controls! i love being a mexican sitcom bee! i love switching panels! i love being a rainbow!

yay
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ryan
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 5:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I beat Call of Duty 4 on regular difficulty in about 5 hours. All but a handful of spots gave me any trouble, and most of those times were because a checkpoint didn't register properly and I had to replay large chunks. One heck of a game.

Virtua Fighter 5 for the 360 came in today, so I'll definitely be playing that tomorrow with, hopefully, some Call of Duty 4 multiplayer and a smidge more Blue Dragon.

I'm installing Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance right now, killing time at 5:40 am to wrap up a project ending around 8 am. I think I've slept something like 7 hours the past two or three days. I look forward to throwing down some micromanaging business over giant battlefields tomorrow.

Oh, anyone handy with PCs? My Gigabit Ethernet port is acting weird. When I boot up, 1 time out of 3 it'll actually register and have me as online, but the other times it shows it as not existing, requiring several restarts and powering off for a bit. I've been looking online, but all I can find is info for another Asus motherboard and for a problem not really related to mine.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 6:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

might be dying, yeah.

have you tried disabling and then reenabling the connection? i had a lot of problems with dsl and my onboard ethernet until i started doing that.
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ryan
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 6:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I have, but the only thing it shows when it fritzes is "1394 Connection," which doesn't respond to enabling/disabling at all. If I just put my computer on standby, I can stay connected; it's when I power off that causes the problems. Argh! I just bought this motherboard less than a year ago, too.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

that sucks.

hey if i have an old pci ethernet card at home (i might) i'll mail it to you.
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 3:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

despite having the most generic possible name, orcs and elves is actually full of character. it's a neat little dungeon crawl for the ds that uses a sturdy 3d engine by john carmack. there are lots of neat little touches: if you bap a spider corpse with your sword, green blood will get all over nearby walls. movement is based around a grid, but occasionally the game will take the camera from you to glide it over to something interesting. this always looks gorgeous. the first time i turned it on, i watched the title screen until it looped, the fly-by was so pretty to watch.

(also neat: the lower screen is you looking down at your body, and you can click the things hanging from your belt to use them. each individual item doesn't appear on your belt - rather you click on the potion and then get a list of all the potions you carry - but it's a neat idea anyway.)

i'm not sure about the developers' decision to replace locked doors with password-protected gates. hunting a password is the same as searching for a key, with the additional step of looking up the "quest log" to remind myself what the password is. but maybe it's a cleaner solution than hefting around a ring full of yale keys.
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 7:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just finished tagteaming through Halo 3.

It was pretty good.
We were playing on Normal Difficulty. There were some parts that got really tedious in how difficult they were, even as I felt the games "mercy" rules start to kick in. Especially with the Flood, when I wasn't sure if I should press on because things are just respawning or stand and fight... the trouble is it seems some checkpoints don't kick in until you've, I dunno, killed a certain # of monsters or aren't under attack or something.) By the end there were 2 or 3 "oh crap, THAT wasn't the ending?"

I guess I don't have anything deep to say about it, except I'm bummed I don't see a guide explaining the differences between the difficulty levels. Also I need to find a plot summary for the three games. It seems like a bit of a hodgepodge.
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Cossix
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 11:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dessgeega wrote:

i'm not sure about the developers' decision to replace locked doors with password-protected gates. hunting a password is the same as searching for a key, with the additional step of looking up the "quest log" to remind myself what the password is. but maybe it's a cleaner solution than hefting around a ring full of yale keys.


I guess it's just a holdover from Doom RPG, or maybe because they were working within the limitations of a cell phone and they didn't want to waste memory tracking if you had the right key or not? Who knows.
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 12:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm curious about this game, an energetic dungeon crawl game is something I've been looking for for a long time and Deep Labyrinth made me sad.

The title is reminiscent of Warcraft (Orcs & Humans).

And was John Carmack involved with this? According to their website it was based on him being a game master in 1986.
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 12:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm playing Orcs and Elves as well. Lovely game. It looks much better in person than it does in internet videos. As Dess said, there are a lot of nice little touches. I especially like the comments my sentient wand makes while I'm slicing corpses to bits with my sword: "Horrid!", "Maniac!", etc. Slicing up those corpses is a good thing to do, by the way, because slimes can eat them to regain health. Another cool thing is that each level has secrets a la DOOM. You get an experience bonus if you find them all.

What difficulty level are you guys playing on? I'm playing normal right now and am wondering if I should switch to difficult before I get too far. (I'm currently drunk off Dwarven ale in the Great Hall Smile )

For me, Orcs and Elves is the closest any recent game has come to recreating the Golden Era of PC RPGs(Might and Magic, Dungeon Master, etc.).

EDIT: Deep Labyrinth made me sad as well. You may not have heard of it, but Mazes of Fate for the GBA was pretty good! And I hear they are making of DS version of Mazes of Fate, so we may have another good dungeon crawl to look forward to.
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