The Gamer's Quarter

[Cycle]

My best friends, the Dynamic Dyke Duo, recently obtained a PS3 (for free!) so I've been playing that.

They bought Oblivion and Assassin's Creed, both of which I've played plenty of already. I still like Oblivion and still think Assassin's Creed is medicore at best.

They RENTED the TRANSFORMERS game which I secretly wanted to play so I'm glad they got it. I'm also glad they didn't buy it! I played as a DECEPTICON and it was pretty sweet at first, playing as whatshisface at the start of the movie, wrecking up army installations and even controlling that scorpian thing. It felt good both as a robot and as a chopper. Then I got to the city and the game sucked, because the cars handle like fudging shoot! Worse than a wet sponge. To make things worse, I found a bug where this guy I was supposed to be fighting got stuck in an area I couldn't access so yeah, fuck this game. Started so promising, though

They also rented TIME CRISIS 4 with the gun. I didn't like this game in the arcades, and the home version is even worse! I don't know what clown thought that shooting hordes of annoying little bugs would be fun, BUT IT ISN'T. Your character also takes way too long to duck and stuff, I feel like I'm getting cheated by the game constantly plus it just isn't very interesting. They also included a new mode that's a FPS. You play it like a Wii game... aim with the gun and move with all the buttons stuck on it. It's pretty god damn terrible! It plays like shit (like one of those z-grade Wii clones you see everywhere now), but worse of all, it's just boring! I'll stick to the Wii thanks, namco, you bunch of clowns.

Are there any PS3 games actually worth playing? I'll get them to rent Uncharted sometime.
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[simplicio]

Exclusives? Just Uncharted, really. I liked Heavenly Sword well enough as a rental- finished it in a single afternoon and sent it back pleasantly satiated. I should play MGS4 I guess, except I haven't played the second and third ones yet.

Otherwise, I like (and own!) The Club and COD4, and the Orange Box, despite everyone ragging on it.

The downloadable games are good though- Everyday Shooter, the Pixeljunk games, Flow.
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[Harveyjames]

I played Street Fighter IV in some Sega centre in Akihabara a day or two ago and had a gay old time. It's pretty great, I think. Everything felt right. That the game alternates between you fighting the CPU and you fighting other people in the arcade you're in is genius.

EXCEPT. Today I played it in a DIFFERENT sega centre in Osaka, where they only had 4 Street Fighter machines. Occupied by me, and three fatasses. I got my dick handed to me! Every time I had to play another person it was one of these human family buckets who had been pumping hundred-yen pieces into this thing all week. I just wanted a nice game of Street Fighter, but instead I got murderised! So the game is amazing, so long as you only play it in arcades where everyone is your skill level. Otherwise, you're in for some 2-rounds-and-game-over-type shit.

[Malloc]

I've pretty much been playing SoulCalibur IV nonstop, going truly nuts with the character creator and teaching myself how to beat Taki/Mitsu users online while playing as Siegfried.

Someone fight me!

[Harveyjames]

I was at a SOUL CALIBUR IV PARTY the other night which bore the distinction of having no actual playing of Soul Calibur IV in it. Apparently most everyone who's bought that game takes it straight back the next day.

[helicopterp]

(just saw this)

[helicopterp]

[JasonMoses]

Yup! XSeed picked up the DS-10 for a US release, according to this gamasutra story.

[Shapermc]

Seriously, I can't stop playing PixelJunk Eden. I keep picking it up to play for like one round then move on but it always takes up my whole night.
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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!"

[Fred]

I just picked up Everyday Shooter (for the computer) which is pretty great. I'm a sucker for interactive music sort of games, though, so I may be biased.
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[daphaknee]

[SuperWes]

My time is split evenly between Pixeljunk Eden, Geometry Wars 2, and Final Fantasy IV. And Braid comes out today, so fuck me. It's a good time to be a gamer.

Oh yeah, I've also been working on a Glorious Trainwreck/advergame/XNA tutorial for a lecture I'm giving at work on making XNA games on Thursday. I'm going to put it on my site too. This is a warning!

-Wes
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[Cycle]

I've been playing BRAID! It is consistently beautiful. It's hardly the HUGE AMAZING THING it has been hyped up to be. It's does quite clever things with time travel here and there, though. I don't know if I'm going to buy it, I'm finding it very frustrating. I have no idea how the hell I'm supposed to get these two puzzle pieces in the second room! Something about the controls feels off, too. So yeah, it's not too shabby.
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[aderack]

It's kind of subtle. The final level, when everything comes together, is something else.
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[helicopterp]

[Max Cola]

you know what's awesome?

playing Shiren, ending up in a monster house and realizing you have an Airslash Scroll :D
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[Shapermc]

[silentmatt]

Coop in Eden is offline only, unfortunately. Which pretty much means I will probably never get the 3-P trophy. Oh well.

Other than that - it is seriously a fantastic game.
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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."

[dessgeega]

rhythm tengoku gold.

it's really just the warioware: touched to rhythm tengoku's warioware: doesn't have anything new to add, it's the same game with a different interface. it's more rhythm tengoku. that being said, of course, it's More Rhythm Tengoku.

the game teaches you a few simple verbs: tap the screen, tap and hold, hold and release, tap the screen and flick the stylus, hold and flick the stylus. then it stretches all of these as far as they can go over the course of apparently at least twenty-four stages.

i just finished the fourth remix; four medals so far (actually, they're gold picture frames in this one). the stages themselves are about as charming as possible, and there are lots of sly cameos by characters from the original.
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[aderack]

I really like Bullet Witch.
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[Swimmy]

I've been playing through Lufia, the first one, because I have a copy. It's good for all the same reasons Dragon Warrior is good (that is, no matter how many accursed random battles they throw at you, they go by so quickly you're done before you can forget what you were doing). At first I thought the game's big annoyance was going to be that, a la the first Final Fantasy, if you attack an empty monster space it registers as a Miss. However, since the game groups monsters of a kind together, like later Dragon Quests, this turns out to not be a big problem.

No, the game's real annoyance is that it has, like, a miiiiiiiiiiillion dungeons. Dungeons on top of dungeons. Dungeons to get keys to doors in other dungeons, only to find out that said other dungeons are only paths to even more dungeons. Dungeons that warp between each other. Dungeons with multiple entrances (only one of them right, of course). Three dungeons, any of them the correct path, on the way to one dungeon (only one of which contains an EXTREMELY VALUABLE TREASURE. . . of course). The dungeons are very backtracky and dead-end-treasurey. And, to top it all off, your walking speed in dungeons and on the world map is only half of what your in-town walking speed is.

Still, I kinda like it. Despite being so full of random battles and situations in which random battles occur, it's got a quicker pace than the huge majority of its contemporary RPGs. I'm about to enter the very last dungeon. I already went through a dungeon on the way to it, and I already know there's another (thankfully small) dungeon waiting at the top. Here goes!

You know, Lufia II is frustrating for similar reasons. Town->Dungeon->Shrine repeat. On the other hand, Lufia II has very, very good puzzles in the dungeons to spice things up.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[kirkjerk]

I almost posted this in "free games" but I guess it's shareware...
Gal-Con... it was some random list of games to try.

I guess a real RTS fan would find it simplistic, but I find it so elemental, like something I would have designed before I knew about RTS. And the Asteroids ships are a nice touch... I feel like I'm playing Ender's Game. It appeals to me in the same way the old C=64 Empire or the Flash Dice Wars game does...

There's also a solitaire like aspect to it, and the urge to reroll the planet layout 'til you have one that's at least neutral...

EDIT: holy crap it's out for iPhone??
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=/ \(<D)_/
==/\/ >_ kirkjerk.com

[Harveyjames]

HAY HAVE U GUYS EVER HEARD OF THE GAME 'GO OUTSIDE AND GET A LIFE!!!' LOLOOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO

[ApM]

Man, Kirk, Galcon's been at the top of the "Featured" list in the App Store for like a week.

Galcon's creator, Phil Hassey, is also pretty active in the Ludum Dare scene. I'm hoping that someday The Hairy Chestival comes to the iPhone, too.

[kirkjerk]

[wourme]

[Cycle]

[aderack]

[aderack]

I got Earth Defense Force 2017 at the same time as Bullet Witch. It is equally awesome in different ways.

Something to consider, however. Bullet Witch traces the future of Earth, year by year, until 2013. Earth Defense Force traces the future of Earth from 2013 to 2017.

So why didn't they just use magic to blow away the aliens?
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[SuperWes]

[Swimmy]

So now I've moved on to Lufia II, which is a much better game than the original. Monsters in dungeons are visible, how you approach them determines your advantage in battle, you can freeze them in place if you don't want to fight them, there are lots of good puzzles, there is an overabundance of money and experience and the battles are easy--it is about as grindless as one of these games can get. Stark contrast to the original. But the first Lufia game has something I still wish every RPG in the world had implemented: a useful mage.

For most RPGs, I'm too afraid to expend MP in regular battles because I don't know how tough the boss will be. MP-healing potions are usually rare, and casting spells takes too long anyway. In Lufia, the mage character can whip out a spell that's equal the attack power of the fighters at only 2 MP for the majority of the game. The animation is very quick, and most monsters don't have elemental defenses to make casting it a bad idea. MP-healing items are very cheap besides.

Lufia II comes close. Spells now take a little more MP. But most dungeons have frequent MP-healing tiles. They also take much longer to cast. And monsters now have all kinds of elemental defenses, meaning on any given enemy (unless you're in an element-themed area like a fire dungeon) you have to burn through four spells to find its weakness, and even more than that later in the game. Then of course you have to remember all of these weaknesses, which is pretty rough due to huge variety.

Mages shouldn't be backseat characters you keep around to make boss fights easier. So few RPGs get this right.

Anyway, Lufia II is a prequel that ends with the events that begin the first game. Meaning the opening of the first game is a big spoiler, especially because of which characters you have with you. Which makes Lufia II a bit more interesting. This is a really, really solid game. Except for the mage thing.

Edit: As I play it more the mages become more useful, but the spell animations are still too long.

Edit again: I think I'm being too harsh on the spell animations. It's an interesting psychological question why, the more damage they do, the more willing I am to tolerate them. Maybe it's conditioning. In any case, sign Lufia I and II onto the list of "RPGs in which mages aren't useless until boss fights."
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[kirkjerk]

[Harveyjames]

Man Cave Story is exactly what I need from a videogame. At the end of a long day when you need to empty your head, it's perfect. When I last left it I was about to take on the final three bosses AND the hell level, with no life pot! It seemed like an insurmountable task at the time, but this evening I flew back through the final cave (hidden), went to Jenka in the sand zone to get a life pot, and then flew back through the cave to the prefab hut on the top of the island! Fun!

Then I had a go on the bosses.

Misery: SHIT ON THAT HO
Doctor: SHIT ON THAT HO
Hulk-Doctor: SHIT ON THAT HO

Took life pot.

Island's Core: Died

But, it was pretty much a breeze to play through! This game is very fun!

[Shapermc]

[Swimmy]

Oh, no. The Lunar games are a mess.

Well, actually, the first one is decent, when you consider that the original game was an FF4 competitor. But it doesn't hold up well and the Working Designs translation on top of an already boring story on top of annoying voice acting is pretty insufferable.

If all the packaging is intact, ebay that shit.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[aderack]

[getter77]

I just finished up Izuna 1 this morning at work save for the final bonus postgame dungeon. That...will have to wait awhile since I am to dive into Izuna 2 come Monday morning.

Overall, Izuna 1 was an infuriating game. However, like most Roguelikes, that is moreso due to my own shortcomings of patience and overabundance of bravado causing me to lose out and have to come at things again.

Also, Samurai Warriors Katana is awesome---addictive and challenging with much depth to it. I encourage folks to try it out since the game can be picked up New and to a lesser degree Used for ridiculously cheap online and probably within some stores. I dream of a sequel or follow up.

[SuperWes]

I wrote an article about Bullet Witch! Look for it in TGQ issue #9, due late 2011!

-Wes
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[Harveyjames]

I made it to the last boss of Cave Story, Ballos. Holy crap! He himself isn't that difficult, I don't think, it's just getting to him with enough health which is the problem.

I'm really happy I'm still playing this game, though! It seems like a long time since I first started this playthrough, and an eon since I picked up the game for the first time. It's still going on, and yet the game is as short as you like! In that respect, it's pretty much perfect in my eyes.

[dhex]

i tried the devil may cry 4 pc demo. it's very pretty.
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[kirkjerk]

[aderack]

Which should tell you just how awesome it is.

It's fairly obscure. I mean. It's about as mainstream as Cavia.
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[kirkjerk]

[dessgeega]

rhythm tengoku has a really nice structure; it took me a few days to clear all the stages (including the hard stages) and now i'm in the phase where i replay all of the stages to earn medals (or gold frames). i'm up to twenty-seven so far, which is enough to unlock most of the bonus material. it bears mentioning that all of the bonus games are amazing games in their own right; the last one in particular, which you unlock at twenty-seven medals, is the very essence of rhythm tengoku.

when i said i cleared the stages of the game, i was partially lying: one of the things about rhythm tengoku gold i appreciate is that after you've struggled with a stage a few times without success, you're given the option of skipping it. this is great because the first time through the game you just want to see all the stages: you're going to go back and replay them all a bunch of times later. if you're having trouble catching the rhythm of one of the stages, it doesn't bring the game to a screeching halt.
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[aderack]

[SuperWes]

[Harveyjames]

I guess that's why people are predisposed to not liking it. Same reason I assume the Cho Aniki games are not any good, but for all I know they might be brilliant.

Oh yeah, Fuck You Ballos. What a mother.

[kirkjerk]

[aderack]

[dessgeega]