The Gamer's Quarter

[aderack]

Yes, well. I mean. It seems so arbitrary. There are so many games you could point at and say "all right, that's clearly awful". This... even if you can't get past some of the technical issues, and there aren't that many, is clearly a game of ambition and scope. And if you can't see that, it's got chilly Gothic cosplay and huge guns. It's hard to figure out how a person could look at it and say "Okay, that's the worst thing ever."
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[Shapermc]

[dessgeega]

man, ai cho aniki is a fucking great game.
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[Lasa]

Bulletwitch is so awesome if only for the cut-scenes .

[extrabastardformula]

I've been playing old Sierra games.

It's really different knowing what I know about the Roberta Williams vision which got dictated to the designers. It makes the root monster even more hateful if such a thing is possible.

Also, the music! There would be so much lawsuiting going on over these games if they were released today. Does the blip blip blop at the start of Leisure Suit Larry remind anyone else a little too much of When I'm Sixty-four?

But yeah, time has not treated these games equally. The entire King's Quest series feels unlovable like an example of everything not to do, and little more than a demo for Ms. Williams' AGI engine. Space Quest and Quest For Glory on the other hand is still mostly entertaining. I wonder what they would have been like without mazes!
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[SuperWes]

Holy crap, Dark Sector is... actually pretty good! Maybe even really good! It's a lot like Gears of War if Marcus had Link's boomerang and it was the only weapon he ever wanted to use. It's not as tight at all and the story gets away from ever letting the player break the game by only showing itself through cutscenes and conveniently overhead radio broadcasts, but the killin' stuff part and many of the setpieces are really great. Oh yeah, and the reason I bought it is because it just went down to $20 on both 360 and PS3. If you're even slightly interested in it I'd highly recommend it!

-Wes
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[Harveyjames]

[Shapermc]

Bionic Commando: Rearmed

BEFORE YOU BUY THIS GAME PLAY THE DEMO AND GO TO THE FIRST COMMUNICATION ROOM. MAKE SURE IT IS THE DEMO VERSION!

that is all.
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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!"

[aderack]

Too late.

I keep wanting a rewind feature in Bionic Commando ReArmed. One of the big things in Braid is removing the tedium of punishment. You make a mistake, you immediately refine your actions until you can get it right.

There's this one moment in ReArmed -- I keep getting it half right, but before I can figure out precisely how to time the next hook, I die. And it takes several minutes and a lot of energy and patience to work back to that point. So by the time I'm ready to set up the move again, I'm all the more prone to mistake. In Braid, I could have mastered that in moments.
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[dessgeega]

having a limited stock of lives at all is frustrating in bionic commando. it's about time we've moved beyond something so arbitrary in videogames.
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[aderack]

Okay, my save file went corrupt. To fuck with ReArmed.

All I did was plug in a second controller!

I did finish the game, mind. I was just going through a second time to pick up stuff I missed. That'll teach me.
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[Harveyjames]

Guys I played through Nanobots, the game that was mentioned in that show along with Calamity Annie. And, it's really good! I thoroughly enjoyed it. The gameplay got slightly repetitive once or twice, but for the most part it's everything you want from this type of game. The characterization is very strong! Also, it reads a lot like it could been written in 1994! There are characters called Groovy Greg and Radical Chad. It makes me want to watch Ren and Stimpy and listen to Jane's Addiction and Nirvana. And play Zombies ate my Neighbours and Greendog The Beached Surfer Dude.

http://www.livelyivy.com/?page_id=73

[aderack]

I would prefer not to feel compelled to play Greendog.
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[Harveyjames]

Ok, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, then. What I mean is it is an early spearhead of the 90's nostalgia wave I've been waiting for for about 3 years now.

Man I remember back in 1996, waiting for the 80's nostalgia wave to kick off. Those were the days!

[WarpZone]

That's Bullet Witch? I've just read the name in passing and assumed it was a localized Shikigami no Shiro or something.

[aderack]

No, Mean Bean Machine is Puyo Puyo.
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[kirkjerk]

I'm not feeling the magic of Bullet Witch as of yet
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==/\/ >_ kirkjerk.com

[helicopterp]

Who's Bullet Witch?
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Shapermc]

[SuperWes]

[ryan]

Is anyone else playing New International Track & Field for the DS? If so, how in the world can you get through the discus event with anyone but Helga? I was doing great with Ashley, and then I hit it and have managed to actually launch one time. Just once. It's driving me nuts.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Shapermc]

[dessgeega]

i havn't had to grind for lives, but yeah, i was referring to game overs. dying an restarting at a checkpoint is fine, because there's usually one about a minute from the place i had trouble with and starting over from a little bit before is a nice way to recenter myself mentally. what's frustrating is getting a game over somewhere deep in the stage (usually at a boss), and then having to restart the stage from the beginning. i've already seen this, i've already proven i can get through it; having to play it again is just a waste of my time. the load times don't help.

not that i expect a capcom remake to be so forward thinking: i can't imagine capcom giving grin the freedom to explore alternative models for death and continuing. but it's annoying and they're not the only ones.

i spent most of my time with super mario galaxy wondering why lives are necessary at all in the game, which gives you a 1up right before any of the hard points anyway (a 1up that reappears every time you die). some games' structure lends well toward a fixed stock of lives - games where players compete in high scores, for example. but in action adventure games where the player's goal is usually to see all of the world, restart-from-the-beginning usually only adds tedium. it's a waste of time, and videogames as a medium need to waste time less.
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[Shapermc]

I don't know why calmity annie has lives. That's so old-school and not forward at all.















just playing devils advocate to prove a point here
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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!"

[Harveyjames]

Coins and 1ups are in Super Mario Galaxy because otherwise there'd be nothing to pick up. They serve no purpose at all. They didn't have the conviction to take out game overs altogether, so they just made it impossible to lose all your lives, instead. This is the type of thing I try not to think about about because it gets me frustrated that I'm not a game designer (and also can't program).

Matt, Calamity Annie has lives because that's the kind of game it is! Some games are built for lives and some aren't. You know better than that.

I am having to explain this to the editor of The Gamer's Quarter, why

[dessgeega]

[Shapermc]

but the point of BC:R isn't to see all the world, it's to build a skill set. that's my point.

Also, harvey, I have hidden text.
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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!"

[dessgeega]

doing something i've already done doesn't build my skillset, moving forward through the game builds my skillset. it's just wasted time.
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[Harveyjames]

I played some of Studio Pixel's other games.

- Guxt is a simple shooter which looks kind of like a gameboy game. Hard and fun.

- Glasses is excellent and comes thoroughly recommended! I think any Cave Story fan owes it to themselves to play it.

- Ikechan is a kind of proto-Cave Story where you're a little squid swimming about underwater, and is kind of not fun. it's reassuring to see that even Pixel didn't get it right first time.

- Azarashi is like a big Bishi Bashi Special minigame where you have three buttons corresponding to three dogs. You have to shoot the dogs' trailing leads with arrows as they fall, and try to pin them to the wall! But down fire too early or the arrow will hit the dog. It's pretty good!

They're all worth checking out, but you can download Glasses here.

[dessgeega]

glasses is fucking brilliant. the choice you make at the end absolutely makes the game.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

I bought Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol some time last week I think it was, because it was really cheap at K-Mart. It's a game where you dance for flowers, water them and then dance for more flowers. Occasionally you fight against blobs of soot in order to protect your flowers. Then you can find toy friends and set their arses to work building things in your park. Despite not featuring any space dungeons it is the kind of game that appeals to me. It also has some really nice low poly models even though people walk in a fashion that would make them fall over in real life.
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[daphaknee]

i just got the gamecube chibi robo it makes me clean my own house

[wourme]

[simplicio]

I love the Chibi Robos! They do smallness so well.
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[kirkjerk]

[daphaknee]

[Harveyjames]

Cave Story. I nearly beat Ballos! I just managed to make the mini eyeball satellites all go blind before I died. I think after that he starts bleeding from his eyes and mouth, which is his final form. Then, victory!

A useful technique is to stand on top of him when he first becomes a giant meteor and then shoot constantly at the bats. You're safe on top of his head, and providing you can shoot the bats quick enough you can keep recharging your health.

VICTORY IS AROUND THE CORNER.

UPDATE:

I can now finish the 'Hell' level with about full life, so I've got a whole health bar and one in reserve to take on Ballos. He's pretty easy once you learn not to panic, and know what you're supposed to be doing. I saw the final form, but then got murderized. I've seen dudes just sit on that guy and hammer the fire button and kill him in seconds flat! That looks cool when you see it on Youtube, but it doesn't work in practise for people who don't have turbofire controllers >:O

[Swimmy]

It does if you've spent the entirety of hell powering your missiles up. If they're level 3, you can do exactly that even without a turbo controller.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Harveyjames]

I'm a powering-up machine, trust me! Maybe I'll use an energy weapon on his earlier forms so I've still got missiles left for the final one.

EDIT: Ok, that's what I did. Beat Ballos and saw the ending with Balrog, Curly and Misery. Wow. Beautiful!

Then I went right back in I played all the way up to escaping the Island with Kazuma! This is easily one of the best games I've ever played. I don't want it to be over! This time round, I'm going to have the machine gun and the sword when I reach the Sacred Grounds.

By the way, if you can kill the fish boss without getting hit once, you get a special medal. It's actually worth doing if only because it makes that part of the game a whole lot more fun!

This is one game you could never accuse of being front-loaded or back-loaded. It's consistently good and surprising all the way through. It's also very clever how the dialogue hints at the deeper mysteries of the game's story all the way through, but you won't think anything of it until your second playthrough. There's a point where Jenka says 'so, my half-wit daughter. You've found a new lord to follow, have you?' which just seems like quiet a throwaway line, but once you know Misery and Jenka's relationship to Ballos and Ballos' relationship to the Doctor, it takes on a much deeper resonance.

What amazing about that is just how unlikely it is that a player will encounter Ballos at all! If this game was released in the pre-internet days, I reckon about 1 percent of players would have ever found the true ending, and unravelled all the mysteries of the game. It's an astonishing piece of work.

I still don't really understand how one man on his own managed to make a better game than any of the scores of professional game designers who've done this shit all their lives. And to do it with such humility, and be content with such anonymity! He's an inspiration to us all, I think!

My sleep patterns are all messed up and I've been up for more than 18 hours, so I'm sorry if my sentences read like I built them out of duplo blocks!

I think so far my favorite parts of the game have been the Sacred Grounds, Ballos, fighting the nest of monsters with Curly without the machine gun (makes a big difference) and fighting the fish while trying to take zero damage . I also love the plantation section.Which bits were your favorites?

[Cycle]

I should probably play all the way through Cave Story one day, huh. Is there a DS port yet???

I recently played METAL GEAR SOLID 4. Way too many long, poorly written and poorly directed cutscenes, as usual, but the gameplay is actually pretty darn fantastic in this one. It feels like such a leg up from Snake Eater which I found to be such a bore. It's still held back by its legacy, but it's surprisingly progressive... it feels much more western, which I hear was quite deliberate. I'd buy this if I had a PS3. Really good stealth game. AND action game!

By the way, my god, the PS3 controller is awful! I was wondering what the hell all the people at SB were complaining about when they were in an uproar about dual analog, because I think the 360 controller feels great, but man. This thing is horrible! Have they even improved it since the original design? Ergh. Are there any good alternative controllers for the PS3? It's not my system, but hell if I'm going to play it with that piece of crap!

I also rented SPIDER-MAN 3 since I loved the second one so much. I enjoyed this one too since... it's basically the same game! It looks better, yes, but it controls, is structured and designed the same as the previous one. That said, they've added much more variety to the game, which is both good and bad. Too many QTE bits for my liking, but there are also some awesome missions. Still frustrating difficulty spikes (nothing as bad as the second game though). It's certainly an improvement, but it's not the sequel I was hoping for. They did add a sort of gang territory mechanic, but they didn't implement it quite how I would have liiked. But whatever, it's still fun swinging around. I'd buy it if I saw it cheap.

Also, it still has Bruce Campbell, so woo.

Also played WiiFit. I really like some of the balance games. The ski jump one is great! I doubt my friends will actually use it as a fitness tool, though. But hey, some of the games will be fun at parties.
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[jjsimpso]

[ryan]

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

I started to read a text file which had the script in it but I couldn't finish it was terrible.

Let's forget about that now. In Chibi Robot these blobs of soot can turn your flowers black which then die at night time. Pricks. I did get the clock which when installed in the park lets you tinker with the length of the day. Putting it right down to the slowest makes the game longer which means you have more time to do stuff thus improving the game. I got all the dances too, so now I can make the flowers happy in more ways. But you can't go out into the town right next to the park and dance for all the people so that they toss pennies at you. Street robots are ignored in this game.
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[Cycle]

[Harveyjames]

I finished Cave Story again. Ballos went down like a cheap trick this time, and that was with the level 2 sword! Ha!

I think fighting the bosses in Cave Story is a lot like having sex. The first bunch of times you're in a blind panic and everything goes wrong because you don't know what you're doing, but then eventually once you settle down you realise there's not all that much to it. Then you escape on a flying dragon while the building collapses (that's a joke).

You can actually beat the game wearing the Mimiga mask! It's not much different, though, although Misery does comment that you look 'peculiar' and cuts her speech in half. It's also possible to finish the game with the little man still in your pocket, and he says something apparently. Neat. That's something to try for next time.

I understand fully why people make fan art after having played through this a few times. Your time with these characters is so fleeting, and you want so much to see what happens to them after the story is over, that the only way to keep them alive is to draw pictures or make fan-fiction or whatever. Or, you know, by playing the game again a whole bunch.

[dhex]

diablo 2 - never played it before.

it's fun.
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[Shapermc]

[ryan]

[dessgeega]

i've been playing wario land 2 on and off over since i finished it a few weeks ago, exploring all the alternate branches of the game. i wish they weren't hidden so well: if it was easier to stumble onto branches so it felt like they were alternate paths through the game rather than extra levels. design-wise, they certainly feel close to the stages on the "main" path. it's also kind of silly: each stage has SO MANY secrets, how can you tell which one will be lead to the secret path? searching a level you know contains a secret exit is frustrating because there are so many red herrings.

this game is HELLA FRUSTRATING. so they got rid of death: wario's indestructable, so when an enemy hits him he just bounces back or changes form. usually the new form makes the task you're attempting totally impossible, so you have to waddle (most of these forms are slower than wario's normal state) back to the beginning of the room, transform back, and start over again.

getting rid of death is pretty bold: the problem is that EVERYTHING ELSE is by-the-rules mario platforming, and super mario bros. has a fairly natural system for allowing the player to make and recover from mistakes. take that away and the only option for punishing mistakes is GO BACK TO BEGINNING, START AGAIN.

wario land 3 takes this and runs with it, into a wall repeatedly.

anyway, i do like the symmetry between the original wario land and wario land 2: in the first game, wario attacks the pirates' castle and steals their loot. in the second, the pirates invade his castle (bought with wario's newfound wealth) and steal the loot back. i think i've said before that where the series went wrong is when it started forcing wario to be heroic: he's a thief and a bad guy!
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[Harveyjames]

Hey guys, I finished Ikechan! It's actually pretty good. It won me over, eventually. It's weird, though, because the game's tiles are laid out in such a way as to suggest that you're going to get a new ability that will provide an immensely cathartic and forfilling ending sequence, which then just doesn't happen.

However, characters from the game reappear in the waterway section of Cave Story, so if you want you can imagine it's set in the same universe- perhaps deep inside Cave Story's island! In fact, you can EVEN imagine that the earthquakes in Ikechan are caused by the island's collapse in Cave Story! It works!