The Gamer's Quarter

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

More Diablo II! We convinced a friend who often has to work nights (he's a caretaker for a kid who needs to be on a respirator when he sleeps and somebody there to make sure it doesn't fuck up) to get Diablo II and last night he got on for the first time. Rather than continue to play our higher-level characters and thus lengthening the amount of time until he catches up, we started over with new characters. Clicking on shit to get shiny stuff is a pretty good formula, so long as its properly balanced.

And that's what Diablo does so well (although I can understand people who prefer the original to the sequel, because the sequel is very very Blizzard for both good and bad), it allows you to feel like you're progressing and getting interesting new stuff while feeling like you have to do work to get there. It's maddening that all of the various Diablo clones manage to muck this up somehow, usually by unbalancing item generation. I know I've ranted about this before, so I'll stop here.

dessgeega · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 1:43 pm Post subject:

holy shit gallop.
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JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

I liked Gallop a lot until I saw the stage 3 boss. And the rest of the game. Ooooooghh.

dessgeega · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 3:43 pm Post subject:

i've never seen screenshots or video of anything past the third boss. i'm not convinced there is anything after.
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dessgeega · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 6:46 pm Post subject:

i'm getting closer to beating noiman. i died at his tank phase again, but now i think i've worked out what strategies to use. up to that point, at least. stage four of strider is still beyond my grasp. i've managed to pass it before, but i can by no means do it consistently.

i'm amazed i solved the "clockwise" puzzle in dungeon master.
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dessgeega · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 10:01 pm Post subject:

reached the third boss of gallop. killed me right away, but fuck if everything i've seen so far isn't an amazing roller coaster of energy. this game is positively gleeful. so far.
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simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

I popped in Cybernator and had a go. It'll take some getting used to these controls, and right now I keep on dying right after getting those missiles on the second stage, but I really like the weight it has, along with the mysterious powers of dash-punching. The manual sums this up:

Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 10:37 pm Post subject:

Hexen done now onto the Deathkings... expansion.
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dessgeega · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 10:38 pm Post subject:

is cybernator contra or valken?
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JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

Valken.

dessgeega · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 10:49 pm Post subject:

thanks. i was struggling to remember any contra that has a "rampage rush".
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Lestrade · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:05 pm Post subject:

I find myself oddly enjoying the hell out of Resident Wiivil. It's just the addition of using the Wiimote that, I find, makes the game 100% more fun to play than before. At work I find myself unconsciously pantomiming aiming and shooting a Ganado with my right hand. Whoa!

Also, I find that I prefer to play the game standing up, which is great. Now if only my TV sat a little higher...

dessgeega · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:01 pm Post subject:

r-type is the modern frankenstein.
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Lestrade · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 5:39 pm Post subject:

I so, SO love the aesthetic of R-Type. I don't think I'd be very good at it; I'd like to play it with a cheat code just to see it all.

dessgeega · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 6:27 pm Post subject:

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

Dess, which path are you taking when you play Hard Corps?

Edit: Also, I think it would be interesting to see what an arcade game port that only allowed you to play the full game once a day would be like. It would let you play the other stages as much as you want for practice, of course, but you'd only get one shot at the whole thing per day. Hm.

dessgeega · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 8:40 pm Post subject:

i'm taking the "save the research center" path because i used the "follow deadeye joe" path when i one-lifed the secret ending back in the day.
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dessgeega · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:52 pm Post subject:

so yeah, i've been unable to make any headway against the third boss and it might well be a brick wall for all i know, but fuck if the first three stages of gallop aren't one of the most exhuberant play experiences i've had in a long time.

it's a post apocalyptic flying car highway chase game, and the idea is that the further to the right your ship is positioned on the screen, the faster the game scrolls. (sort of like kingdom grand prix.) you've got a forward shot and a homing laser that you can use to kill enemies coming from other directions without decelerating, but it has a limited charge. the goal is to clear each stage with the fastest possible time, which means playing with your ship dangerously right and barreling through the stage at high speed, enemies chasing you and homing missiles snaking towards you, huge sprites bursting into flames and careening out of the sky.

my current best times are 1'22'98 on stage one and 1'38'36 on stage two. whether i'll ever clear stage three i don't know but i do know that what i've played so far is amazing.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

I started playing Second Sight again after stopping due to frustration. There are some really great ideas here, and full of moments where the game is clever or the game requires you to be clever. Unfortuantely, it's frustrating as all fuck thanks to loose controls, slow responses and the fact that if you screw up (which is very easy to do), you have to do a bunch of crap all over again.

EDIT: Nevermind, ok the game is still cool, but certainly suffers from some problems that could have been easily fixed.
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dhex · Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 7:38 am Post subject:

i would be playing arcanum if the power didn't keep going off in my apartment.
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Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

I played a bunch of Doom 3 last night because my dad got stuck. It was when the two Barons of Hell appear, just before you go to hell for the first time. So I ended up playing through the entire hell section of Doom3, and you know what? It's pretty fun! There's space to move around and dodge and go crazy, and It actually feels like a Doom game. Then I left hell and it got boring again Sad

Lestrade · Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 11:22 am Post subject:

I love that battle with the two barons. It was very nerve-wracking. But yeah, I wish the hallways were a bit more roomy. There's an area just before you fight Sarge when the game becomes—utterly and completely—a kick-ass version of classic Doom. For those few minutes, everything is glorious.

dessgeega · Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 3:40 pm Post subject:

i have beaten noiman cascade. no bombs, and i had two lives left afterwards - which means i must have lost three: one to taurus, one to gemini, and one to the helicopter. huzzah! the jungle stage is pretty amazing.

speaking of jungle stages, i think the amazons in strider are saying "hookah beast and kabuki jungle". i'm not sure what this means.
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 7:44 pm Post subject:

I finally put all of the Deathkings of the Dark Citadel to rest, their corpses rotting in the sun and apart from missing the hub 1 secret level and the gaffe with the Heresiarch, where I mistook my flechettes for quartz flasks like a goose killing myself, I feel pretty good about how I played. Maybe I should go play some Heretic now or something.
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extrabastardformula · . Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 295

Been playing the Ikari Warriors games. Yes I included POW in that list. It was kinda sads how the series completely degenerated.

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

I finished Monster World IV. It really loses steam once you get to the Ice Pyramid, which effectively forces you to go through 3 very similar and fairly boring dungeon areas in a row, and it follows this up with another area packed with aggravating platforming, including moving conveyor belt platforms over spikes and the like. Worse yet, the last area consists of walking left-to-right, fighting enemies and previous boss encounters in the most unapologetically filler-like way possible, followed by a final boss that forces you to take damage - if you are at low life, it's very possible that you'll simply have to replay the entire thirty-minute area again no matter how well you play at the actual boss fight. It's all surprisingly hateful and terrible, and I was a little shocked that the game sucked as bad as it did, considering how breezy and imaginative it was initially.

Edit: The music is great, though! I especially liked how the composer worked motifs from the first Monster World into some of the music at the end of the game.

dessgeega · Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 5:28 pm Post subject:

yeah. i've cleared the pyramid (other than the tedious enemy hallways there are some good ideas there) but i lost steam at the last stage and have never finished it.

it seems as though i bought a copy of shadowrun that can't save. boo!
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Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

dark steve · . Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 1110

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Probably! I've been meaning to go through my NES games at least and replace their batteries and doing some poking around, it seems like it's something that's relatively easy to do on SNES carts as well.

Mainly I want an excuse to buy a soldering iron.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

So, I’ve been playing a ton of games as Toups and Thatbox have been at my house for nearly a week. The star of the party was Carsaconne for the 360. My wife even got in on quite a few games. It was amazing. We also power-gamed through most of Raw Danger in a sitting and then went to see Transformers (Raw Danger is much better than Transformers!). We messed around with a bunch of games at Wes’ house (like CD-i games and Michigan which I now need to get a copy of). Then as the last crowning jewel of the visit we played through Silent Hill 2 (my 6th time through it).

Fantastic times all around, and I don’t even know where to head next.

OH, yeah, I finished The Darkness and it has some really excellent points, but it’s drowning in a sea of mediocrity. I watched Toups play through the first 2/5 of the game and realized that overall its not that good, but it does have some really excellent moments and touches. I guess that I would be willing to trade/part with this game if anyone’s interested.

Oh, and bits of Shadowrun all over the place. I look forward to getting more time with the game soon.

aerisdead · . Joined: 03 Dec 2006 Posts: 254 Location: Toronto, Canada

I really didn't like Rule of Rose.

I don't ken how Jennifer can kill monsters with an axe but won't just fucking beat the shit out of those kids. A demand to avoid combat completely would have made way more sense - other stupidity includes using an axe to kill a bunch of monsters that a wooden door tied with ropes demands, and being fenced in by fences that were roughly a foot tall for some other irritating battles.
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aerisdead

dessgeega · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 6:49 pm Post subject:

i've been playing earth defense force 2 on the ps2. i was considering getting the xbox version, to actually have another game for the console, but the second game seems to be regarded as better by a lot of people, and it's much less expensive too.

i am enjoying it. there aren't many 3d games that focus on crowd control, at least that i can think of. i like that when i miss a giant ant a building collapses in a cloud of dust.

i don't like that when the camera locks onto something, like the ufo in stage 7, it becomes impossible to attack the enemies who are right in front of you, shooting. or impossible to see at all, if you're in the tank.

and i don't really like playing as pale wing, the flying character who doesn't appear in any of the other games in the series. maybe i just need to give her time.
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not a zombie · . Joined: 21 Jun 2007 Posts: 21

Rather than work on cracking game-ending Judge patterns, I've been practicing my positioning on the 3rd Area's final enemy. I've found a spot where I can shield the thing to death and avoid the homing lasers without moving.

If I had to compare Magnificence to a US Supreme Court Judge it would probably be Earl Warren.

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

Are you talking about Warning Forever?

dessgeega · Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 1:24 am Post subject:

i thought judgement silversword.
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ApM · Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 1:27 am Post subject:

So, the Genesis port of Roadblasters finally came in the mail today (apparently the post office sent it back the first time they mailed it). It's fucking gorgeous and sounds fantastic. It's really a lot less forgiving than the NES port -- you don't get anywhere near the same amount of bonus reserve fuel (the NES port would basically fill you up if you had a 10x multiplier), for example, and I don't really understand how bonus points are doled out yet.

I'm also finding it really hard to steer, and thus aim. It became a little easier once I read the manual and discovered that I didn't actually have to bother accelerating, but it's still pretty rough. In my hazy, rose-tinted memory of the arcade version, the steering wheel is fantastic and responsive, and you can really perfect the art of hitting a car in the other lane in the middle of a turn. Probably I was about as terrible at the arcade version as I am at the Genesis port, though, and my memory is clouded by how easy the NES port is.

Overall, a damn good port that's very faithful to the original. I'm delighted to own it.

dessgeega · Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 2:12 am Post subject:

you can get pretty accurate with the d-pad after a while. i've never played the arcade version, so i don't know if it's just me.

i felled godzilla in edf2. it was actually the first stage i've died in (while not playing with pale wing), but that's partly to blame on shooting a rocket into a tree that was three feet in front of me.
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JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

Ethoscapade · . Joined: 30 Oct 2005 Posts: 276

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

not a zombie · . Joined: 21 Jun 2007 Posts: 21

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

I uh, played through the first loop of Strikers 1945 recently - there was not a single screen-filling death laser to be found! And... I'm having a hard time thinking of another recent arcade shooting game that does, honestly.

Also I kind of figured that tepples had aspergers or something when I saw this video.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

Yeah, but how are screen-filling bullet waves "cheap" compared to what's in Judgement Silversword? The bullet patterns are really similar to what's found in Psikyo games, so I'm just wondering where not a zombie is coming from, here.

not a zombie · . Joined: 21 Jun 2007 Posts: 21

dessgeega · Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 3:55 pm Post subject:

judgement silversword is a pretty neat game. someday i would like to play it on real hardware.
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dessgeega · Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 6:49 pm Post subject:

the stages in edf2 are starting to get interesting. fighting off a legion of ufos while war of the worlds style walking death machines crawl across the plains toward you, a claustrophobically tight tunnel with giant ants pouring out of one direction, giant spiders the other. is it just me or are tanks completely useless?
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extrabastardformula · . Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 295

I don't understand what the hell the point is with Ikari Warriors III. I appreciate a brawler that has attacking in 8 directions instead of left and right on a few planes, but this doesn't hold together very well. Maybe it's the one player, but this feels like a it's not quite there.

Also POW isn't as hot as I remembered either. I ought to turn off the MAMe and check the NES version maybe.