The Gamer's Quarter

[dessgeega]

harveyjames, when will you realize that nothing has subtext, no matter how deliberate it is
_________________

[dhex]

blowjobs? rape?

you people are fucking nuts.
_________________

[Cycle]

I think the homosexual rape theme was brought back heavily in Alien 3. I mean, it was set in an all-male prison! Come on!

The design Giger did for Alien 3 was.... kinda a little too weird. I'm glad they didn't use it.

THE ALIEN HAD POUTY LIPS
_________________

[dhex]

don't they all have pouty lips? in order to like, fit the other more evil lips in there?

hmmm...

if i were the uk's most prominent film critic i could refer to this as an update of the vagina dentata motif and have people give me checks rather than settle for change on a street corner, but god is cruel and his wrath is terrible.

or better yet, the cannibal clitoris... all the men are destroyed by their inability to deal with the wrath of female sexual agency and a reversal of the breeding pattern; the manifestation can only be combated by a whole woman, able to reconcile both creation and destruction. ripley destroys both the corporate facimile of life (the android) and literally ejaculates the monstrous manifestation of the female urge gone mad back into the void (nuit confronts isis aka the widow spider, and de-evolves her back into the original form of hathor) to prevent an even greater predation at the hands of late-late-late stage capitalism.

and then she falls back into dreamspace.

sometimes i wish i had more huckster in my blood.
_________________

[ryan]

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

Killing Time was arse, play Realms Of the Haunting instead as it's a much better first person horror shooter.
_________________

[Cycle]

Realms of the Haunting was rad until I used an item in some puzzle, played half-way through the game, and realised I needed that same item for another puzzle. I thought FUDGE THAT I ain't going all the way back there and never bothered finishing it.

It was awesome up to that point though!

And I had a good time with the Killing Time demo, damnit.
_________________

[Ketch]

[dessgeega]

apollo justice is a game about chasing a fifteen-year-old's panties.

did maya get too old for the moe set? was that was this series had to be rebooted?

the stench of double-entendre permeates everything in this game. and while an adult sensibility is fine, even preferable to the goody-two-shoes-ness of the series in the past, there's nothing of sincerity here to grab on to. everything is a caricature of something more likable from the phoenix wright trilogy.

i think i'm done with this game.
_________________

[Harveyjames]

So Pheonix Wright is a game where character is very important? I've never played it.

[Harveyjames]

[dhex]

http://www.gamersquarter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=66937

bumping this over to general to avoid shitting this one up further.
_________________

[Swimmy]

[sediment]

Much like James Harvey, I've been playing through HL2 for the first time.

My fiancee got me an XBox 360 Elite for my birthday/president's day/belated christmas, so naturally the first thing I did was pick up the Orange Box for it since my computer is presently a sad old man wetting himself, except made of plastic and sensitive conducting materials and capacitors.

I already played through and beat Portal very thoroughly. Very fun little game, and I really hope placeable portals make it into way more games.

Anyway. I'm in Ravenholm, thoroughly enjoying richocheting sawblades down tightly-packed corridors of zombies. The ones that throw the darker, larger headcrabs at you are really quite bothersome.
The entire Water Hazard level was really, really bothersome - until I got the chopper gun installed on my boat, in which case it became a beautiful story of love and peace and by "love and peace" I really mean REVENGE.
I'll probably play through Episodes 1 & 2 once I'm done with HL2, but I've got Bioshock and Mass Effect scheduled to arrive from Gamefly today or tomorrow so obviously rental time trumps "games I own" time.

All I need to do now is get a long enough ethernet cable to where I can get my box networked, so I can actually play TF2 without being sad and alone in my own instance of 2fort.
_________________

[helicopterp]

[Harveyjames]

If you can read Vagina Dentata into that picture then you can read it into White Meat on Black Street and any video starring Max Hardcore.

[Dracko]

It's not shooting a cock out of its mouth, man. It's erecting a phallic organ of head shot gib splooge!

I love those movies.
_________________
"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[helicopterp]

I guess i wasn't really looking at the picture, just thinking back to the film. Your picture is totally penis-in-mouth.
_________________
Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Harveyjames]

thanks man

but what did you think of the alien pic??? OH!

[Cycle]

Between bouts of Audiosurf I've been playing Metroid Prime 3, which isn't too bad I guess. The first part is a little too Halo-ish. The second part was better bit still not all that great. The third area was great at first... the sky city. It looks beautiful and I love the harmless machines all over the place and alien techology, plus the transporation systems are lots of fun. It really reminded me of Riven... very similar vibe. Now enemies are all over the place though, and it's a bit boring again. I've also visited some kind of haunted spaceship was also pretty cool, but the design of this game just feels so lazy and unimaginative that I don't think I'll play it much further, even though I'm interested in what comes next.

The plot and characters are also pretty dumb.

So I'll probably not finish it and sell it to buy some other Wii game. Recommendations?

I was listening to some Thief 3 music, and decided to start playing the first game again since it's the only one I never finished. I played this first mission so many times in the demo... and it's still awesome.
_________________

[Harveyjames]

elebits always looked kind of neat!

[dessgeega]

ghost squad.
_________________

[dhex]

cycle: which thief games should i play? i have played none of them, which seems like an oversight.
_________________

[sediment]

The ideal situation is "all of them".

Thief and Thief 2 are pretty good. I have, but have not yet finished, Thief 3 as I currently have other priorities (RAVENHOLM FUCK YEAH). I will say the first two missions are really cool, though!
_________________

[Cycle]

[sediment]

I got Mass Effect and Bioshock in the mail from Gamefly today.

Mass Effect is currently recieving priority. I started an Infiltrator but am thinking I should maybe go with that other class, the biotic/tech one. I'll probably stick with my infiltrator and keep my biotic super-friends with me at all times.

Is it just me or female protagonists' asses jiggle when running? It's kind of mesmerising. If I make a male character and his ass doesn't jiggle, I'm going to be upset.
_________________

[daphaknee]

[daphaknee]

[internisus]

[boojiboy7]

[dessgeega]

trucy annoys me for the same reasons maya does: she's an overenthusiastic, incredibly naive cartoon character, and she's a fifteen-year-old who follows the player around while talking about her panties.

i agree that the writers realized they'd done as much as they realistically could with phoenix wright and his circle of friends. instead of stopping, they dressed the game up with a bunch of new, forgettable characters and some unnecessary variations to the basic gameplay. (use your magic bracelet to find liars! the psyche-lock at least made investigations more focused and less tiring, even if it was unfortunately tied to the health system.)

apollo justice just feels unnecessary in every way.
_________________

[Harveyjames]

Is Moe the word Lolicon ethusiasts use now we've got wise to the fact that lolicon is just a veiled term for paedophilia? Will they jump ship onto a new word with an even vaguer definition soon?

It's a bit like how furries are mostly just gay men who don't want to say they're gay men. It's furrydom for paedos.

[sediment]

basically yeah

btw there are some straight furries out there, they're rare but they do exist
_________________

[simplicio]

I got a really big TV! Then I felt like I needed True Next Generation Power, so I bought Uncharted, which was a fun videogame. Though I would like a fun videogame that doesn't devolve from killing mercenaries to killing evil beasties sometime? Still, this game has an achievement thingy for hanging off a cliff while killing people on the other side with grenades. That's hard to argue with. Also, I really suck at aiming. Both those actionbutton.net reviews are truthful, really.

Also, I bought Virtua Fighter 5, before realizing this was a mistake. I don't like fighters, except possibly goofy ones like Soul Calibur (with 6 foot swords) and Tekken (with pandas). I don't have an arcade stick. I don't have anyone to play against. I don't care to play online. I think it was that damn old drunken guy with the mustache. Who can say no to him?

I downloaded a bunch of demos. The PS3 MLB (is it The Bigs? something else? I've forgotten already) demo, purporting to be the most realistic videogame baseball ever, is in fact terrible and entirely alienating. Everyone looks like Command & Conquer motion capture people on placed on a 2d baseball field backdrop. Dhex, there's actually a problematic anomaly for you here, because as compared to the heavily "J"ed MLB Power Pros (complete with college/dating/baseball training sim), this is the clear candidate for chemo of the soul.

Patapon, the PSP demo and forthcoming retail product, is everything right about rhythm games (in my world where Guitar Hero, Beatmania, DDR etc. is everything wrong about rhythm games, leaving a pretty slim selection of titles viable for such a title, but still).
_________________
"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

[Lestrade]

I just finished Separate Ways in RE4 for the Wii. Question! Every preview and review of this game claimed that it was a port of the GameCube version, not the slightly-less-pretty PS2 version.

I think this is bullshit, because on my HDTV, it's obvious that the cutscenes are pre-rendered (which was the case on PS2, NOT GameCube). They look low-res, blurry, and genuinely crappy. There's an obvious discrepancy between the realtime game visuals and the cutscenes.

Could someone out there please, please prove me right on this? I don't know why, but it's driving me nuts. I guess the easiest way to tell is to unlock a bonus costume and see if it shows up in a cutscene. Maybe I'll try to do this tomorrow.

[Cycle]

The main game features in-game cutscenes, like the GC version, but the extra chapers feature pre-rendered versions. I think it's because one of the extra chapters was PS2 only? And they got lazy? I don't know!
_________________

[Scratchmonkey]

Internet Channel on Wii + MST3K on Google Video = Good Times on the Couch.

[Lestrade]

[dhex]

[ryan]

The Club continues to be almost completely awesome. The characters need to be more diverse, aside from their wacky style and predictable attitude. Now stop your bleeding, combos! Damn you!
_________________
Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Cycle]

So I finished Thief and it's pretty much one of the greatest games I've ever played! It has its flaws, but it's still great.

So Thief 1 has the best narrative, Thief 2 has the best level design from a mechanical standpoint, and Thief 3 has the best plot and the most technically sound.

It's interesting to note that the story was written for Thief 1 first and then the levels were designed around it, whereas the levels were designed first in Thief 2 and then the story was worked into them. It's very easy to see this, and it's very interesting playing both of the games and seeing where each method hits and misses.

I should not that I played Thief Gold, which features alterations to the original levels and bug fixes. I encountered only a small number of bugs, and they must have edited the zombie levels quite a bit because I found them to be (mostly) well designed, with the zombies well spread out and easy to dispose of or avoid if you have your wits about you, though they did get frustrating every now and then.

Oh, and it's important to have your wits about you. This is a pretty smart game and I really appreciated it not treating me like an idiot, like so many other games. Or at least, not making it feel like it thought I'm an idiot. But yeah, the world is so believable, and the story is intertwined with the mission design so well, and there are sorts of brilliant game narrative tricks used here and there. Man, why did I wait so long to finish this?

Oh, the Gold version also added three new missions. I think one of them wasn't needed, but the other two are lots of fun and add to the story.

BUT the greatest thing about Gold is the Blooper Reel mission. Best Easter egg ever (next to Maniac Mansion in DOTT)! It's basically a modified version of the first mission, but filled with fun stuff. Like, it shows a bunch of weird bugs they discovered during development which are musing, such as archers launching apples at you, midget guards, monsters that fart themselves to death, dancing zombies, killer treasure boxes; that sort of thing. It also has a few things they cut out of the game or changed, such as the original Bugbeast model (which looks like a naked green lady), and they show early sketches in clever ways. Like, in the areas where there are paintings, some of them are replaced with the sketche version of them. There are signs all over the place with commentary on the various things, ALSO THERE IS A BASKETBALL COURT. So yeah, man, every game needs something like this. Also, I guess it turns out Looking Glass were the first people to provide in-game commentary! And this was before DVD commentaries! Stick that in yer pipe and smoke it, Valve.

So I’m pretty certain I’m going to play Thief 2 next!

Oh, a final note; I’m thankful that Thief isn’t a long game. It was about ten-eleven hours which is a very comfortable length for this sort of game. Hooray for no filler. It probably also helped that I was trying to be real thiefy and just grab my objective and any loot on the way while leaving as little trace as possible. Probably would have been much longer if I felt the need to explore everywhere... but even on levels where I DID do that, none of them lasted longer than two hours. Or even an hour and a half, I think.
_________________

[Harveyjames]

I finished Ravenscroft in Half-Life 2, and it would have been a really nice clean way to end my play session if the Priest hadn't glitched and failed to open the fucking door to the mines, so I was just left with him perpetually telling me to 'get to the mines, brother!' in front of a gate that was plainly closed.

I also thought it was funny when at one point on my prescribed route he told me 'you're on the wrong side of town, brother! Did I not tell you to get to the church?' Yeah, well maybe I would have gone straight to the church if some clownstick hadn't filled the place with gates and wire mesh fences that force me to navigate the town in the most twisty-turny and convoluted way ever. At one point I had to jump off a roof into a rain barrel, you crazy fuck!

I don't like the sound of these 'mines', either. The sewer was bad enough. Now I have to go to a MINE, oh joy! I hope there's a mine cart ride section like every video game ever!

Don't get me wrong, this has been my favorite part of the game so far next to the waterways. But, jeez, they make you work for the good stuff.

[sediment]

It took me a few to grasp that they wanted me to jump into the rain barrel, honestly. I'm not done with Grigori's funhouse yet, since.. I started playing Mass Effect halfway through.

Ravenholm is crazy awesome, though.
_________________

[Adilegian]

I am crazy addicted to No More Heroes.

[Lackey]

I found Ravenville exhausting, not entirely in a bad way, but it isn't my favourite part of the game. The constant ambushes are a bit grating.

I have some kind of weird reverse taste towards half-life 2 though since people keep telling me they found the highway section boring but for me it was the best. It is basically a series of apocalyptic vignettes. A whole game like it would be awesome, but in context the needs of a first person shooter mean that every investigation ends in a pile of ammo crates. Some of the puzzles are fun.

I just played through Penumbra: Black Plague. I'm really glad they decided to end it in one episode, I heard originally they planned to do it as a trilogy. It was a mixed bag and I haven't figured out how I feel about it yet, really. It was entertaining, anyway. I'm also glad to see the developers improving steadily from tech-demo to Penumbra to this, it gives me hope for the future. What strikes me about the game is that in a lot of circumstances it is really satisfying just to make things go and most of the puzzles make me feel clever and not "oh so that's what you wanted, puzzle designer?" It is a slight pity that the game is so wrapped in a survival horror game mentality.
_________________
| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[dhex]

[Harveyjames]

Yeah, the mines were mercifully brief!

It's really got to the point where I'm just playing the game for the sake of having played it, since I can't claim to be enjoying the game a whole lot. Still, it's like a variety show; if you didn't like the last bit, maybe you'll like the next one.

That section where I was climbing the structure under a massive railway bridge whilst fighting a helicopter gunship can go and eat a dick, since I killed the helicopter and then fell off the bridge about 5 times. But I kind of like twiddling around in the buggy. The crane was neat, too.

[Scratchmonkey]

Man, I have started playing this again, although I think I'm going to have to look into trying to get my old save off of my other computer (not exactly sure how that works under Steam -- why can't it save saves across multiple computers anyhow?), since I've just gotten to the first headcrab section and it's a major relief just because I don't have to mess around with a stupid puzzle every 5 minutes or so.

Sure, the HL2 puzzles are "better" than say, modern-day Zelda puzzles; not by much though and going through the game for the second time just makes the more contrived sections that much more irritating.

(Of course my "old" save is in Ravenloft with no ammo and having lost most of the gravity gunnable stuff, so going back to it might not be any better.)

[dessgeega]

the mine scene in half-life 2 is so unnecessary.
_________________