The Gamer's Quarter

[Shapermc]

[dessgeega]

shooting game history gashapon! the r-9a arrowhead, the vic viper, the fucking silver hawk.

(courtesy the jeej.)
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[Lestrade]

I'm back from a cottage, and it's been announced that Quake is coming to XBLA. I... Oh Christ, am I excited. So, is that list real or not? A Shenmue pack would be grand.

[dessgeega]

that list is probably fake. quake on xbla is pretty cool though. would you hate me if i said i like marathon multiplayer better?
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[Cycle]

sometimes the truth hurts, dess. it's not your fault.
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[Lestrade]

[Shapermc]

[ApM]

Gobliiins 4?!?

Oh HELL yes.

[Six]

Now there's something I didn't see coming like so many stupid gobliiins deaths

[Lestrade]

[Dracko]

That problem was already in the original Marathon series.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[ryan]

[ryan]

I could link to the press release, but I don't think anyone here is that interested, so I'll just say that I'm floored by the fact that Madden 2008 is going to be released on 10 systems. Ten.

- PlayStation 2
- PlayStation 3
- Xbox
- Xbox 360
- GameCube
- Wii
- PC
- DS
- PSP
- Phones

I think that's a record.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Harveyjames]

[Shapermc]

[dessgeega]

interview with bit blot (aka the aquaria team aka derek yu + bffs).

hard corps isn't actually that hard, it's just that giant robots tend to jump out at you while screaming BOOGA BOOGA BLOO
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[Cycle]

[Scratchmonkey]

[Harveyjames]

I say Nintendo should get the guy who did Ico to do for Metroid what he did for Zelda, and keep the Yankee-doo-dahs away from it.

[helicopterp]

I thought the Yankee-doo-dahs did rather a good job with Metroid Prime. I am not, however, currently very thrilled with what I have seen of the third one.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[SuperWes]

Metroid Prime is my favorite game ever and Metroid Prime 2 is one of my least favorite. I like what I've seen so far from 3 art-wise, but it looks like they might be doing away with the non-linearity altogether, making me wonder why it's even called Metroid. I'll be getting it regardless, but I'm hoping it's better than it looks.

-Wes
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[SuperWes]

This one's for Dess, and will probably make her pretty happy on two fronts.

Apparently Cameltry DS came out in the US under the name Labrynth. And IGN Hated it.

-Wes
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[Harveyjames]

Yeah, I did kind of like Metroid Prime. They got a lot of things right. Even that one has had a bit too much of the Todd MacFarlane Kool-Aid, though. They need to hire someone cool to handle all the storytelling and cutscenes, because they obviously don't know what the fuck they're doing.

[Lestrade]

[Shapermc]

[helicopterp]

[ryan]

[Harveyjames]

Todd MacFarlane was the first person to cross superhero comics with heavy metal album cover-style angst and posturing. Everything he does looks like it was dreamed up by a 13-year-old listening to Iron Maiden while reading Spider-man.

When I say Retro have been drinking too much of the Todd MacFarlane Kool-Aid, I'm mainly I'm referring to the following: 'Dark Samus'. The title 'Metroid Prime: Corruption', and the theme of dark power corrupting her soul and she likes it etc. etc. . Samus's black suit in Prime, and her Spider-Man stances throughout.

All this toss is really not in the spirit of the original games, which were mostly quite bleak, quiet affairs, and were sort of exercises in tone and setting one, simple mood- that of being isolated and lost. Samus' body language suggests a reserved, withdrawn manner. The games have almost no dialogue, not even a human face to identify with, and take place on overcast, rainy days. Retro emulate this to an extent, but fall short for all the reasons above. For all the stuff they get bang on, there's enough tonality issues in their games to give me the impression that the people putting it together are basically just dorks. The poetry and theme of the games is lost .

This is Samus:



I don't know what the hell this is.

[Mr Mustache]

Why is the series now Metroid Prime:? It seems unnecessarily cumbersome, and doesn't really make sense.
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Straight up

[Harveyjames]

Just to differentiate Retro's 3D metroid games from Nintendo's 2D ones. Metroid games developed by Nintendo are still called just 'Metroid' whatever, no Prime.

The thing you fight at the end on Metroid Prime is called 'Metroid Prime', too. They probably chose this name because they grew up on Transformers and Optimus Prime and JO'ed themselves to death when the Transformers movie came out this year, probably

[Dracko]

Any of you remember the Castlevania III animated project? Well, an extract of the first draft has been released. I for one hope it remains unchallenged. In the name of historical accuracy, you understand.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Cycle]

I'm glad they are ruining the Metroid Prime franchise with all the spin-offs and sequels instead of the normal Metroid series. Metroid Prime Pinball was pretty great, I'm glad they made that.
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[dessgeega]

metroid prime pinball is not bad, aside from being hideous.

that excerpt from the castlevania script is cute.
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[Mr Mustache]

[Harveyjames]

I know, it doesn't make sense. But also there aren't any 'wars' in Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing. It's just about brand recognisability.

Hey the first hour of Metroid Prime: Corruption is available to watch on the net! And it looks horrible!

1.) You start off with a video of Samus getting into her suit. It just magically appears around her like a hologram. Huh??

2.) Soon, you're on a friendly 'galactic federation spaceship.' To get you used to controlling the gun, The NPCs tells you 'please calibrate your weapons before you come in!!' and you have to shoot targets. Why are these people making her do this, now? She's not here to shoot people. There's little effort made at making this world logical or believable.

2.) All the NPCs have helmets that resemble Samus's. Isn't her suit meant to be one-of-a-kind, ancient alien technology? ... I did like how they all appear to be looking down at Samus, which seems to imply she's quite short. Nice touch, I guess.

3.) Samus doesn't talk at all, which is fine usually but makes her seem like a weirdo when she's surrounded by all these walking talking humans. It's not like Samus didn't have dialogue in previous games, so why not now?

4.) The galactic federation ship, despite being populated by humans who the scanner says are 'untrained for combat', has doors, ramps and switches that only work if they're shot with a lazer gun. What

5.) Incidentally 'Federation' is a word that shouldn't be used in sci-fi unless you want to make boring cliched rubbish in which case go ahead. Absolutely no imagination has gone into the creation of this environment. The wider world of Metroid was pretty much a blank slate until now, so it's a pity they didn't try harder in imagining it than just recreating the same old grey spaceships and white guys in star trek suits that we see in every FPS ever. To look at it, this could be Halo could be Doom 3 could be Perfect Dark,.

6.) The colours on this spaceship are really unimaginative and bland. Blue uniforms in grey ships with blue lighting. Nice!

7.) The cutscenes are terrible - the animation in them is bad. They're full-talky. Loads of dialogue and exposition. But Samus, in a line-up of other talking bounty hunters, doesn't talk at all! Again, we are left asking why. You'd think she was a robot, if they hadn't shown us her face already. It'd be good if some characters made reference to this and mistook her for a robot, at least in reference to the ambiguity of the previous games, but it's not that clever.

8.) Rolling around the innards of the spaceship as a ball looks cool as always, but you'd think if they're going to be making this all talky and explainy they could at least make some attempt to explain the fact that she can turn into a fucking ball. If this was a movie right about now would be the point when you'd say 'WHAT THE FUCK SHE TURNED INTO A BALL.'

9.) It's all running around and shooting! I know Miyamoto will have told them the first 20 minutes are meant to be the most exciting, but they could at least have made those first 20 minutes Metroid-y. To those who aren't familiar with the series (and don't know about the non-linearity and exploration) It just looks like an inferior version of Halo at this point, except you can turn into a fucking ball for some reason.

10.) Ok, that was retarded. Samus killed the Omega Space Pirate by electrifrying it, and it fell off the Spaceship and then another Spaceship drove into it while it was falling through space. I think the cutscenes were written by a six-year old. But even my six-year-old space comics displayed a base knowledge of how gravity works.

11.) Samus then goes to a populated, soldier-filled planet where she has to 'get the planetary defense system back online'. What is this, fucking Halo?

12.) Then she gets an armour upgrade and does some Spiderman poses.

13.) The planet, by the way, looks much like the spaceship.

14.) Now Samus has to go and 'get the generator back online'. Rather than focusing and expanding on what makes the Metroid series unique, everything about this game is completely fucking generic.

15.) I won't be getting this game :(

[Cycle]

link plz
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[Harveyjames]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PLkKu3wzxFE

Also, I'm logged onto Gonintendo.com at 3.24am and they're doing a live video podcast! I've never seen the like!

They're just all sitting 'round the main guy's dining table, this little gang of 20-something men and women, all discussing Nintendo-related things from an itinery and horsing around. They even all call each other by their screen names. It's so cute! They love games so much! I can't imagine any of them has ever said a swear word.

[Lestrade]

Argh! I've always wanted to watch one of those live podcasts. How do you get dialed in to that?

I'm trying not to read the Metroid synopsis. I"m also trying not to cry. :-(

[Harveyjames]

I just logged on to the site and there it was, as the top news item- a full streaming video. Amazing!

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

[Harveyjames]

Yeah, I know it's not without precedent, (Freeman, Link, Mario) but there doesn't seem to be any reason for it here. Especially since Samus's lack of dialogue was circumstantial before, while here it's an aesthetic decision. But she's had an inner monologue before (in Fusion) so there's no point to it, it doesn't serve the game at all- unless it just seems like they couldn't be bothered, or they don't have enough faith in their writers to do her justice, or they didn't want to upset fans by casting a shit actress.

[Cycle]

well i watched the videos, not as bad as james descrives in my opinion, but it certainly doesn't look like a metroid game. it looks entertaining but very very silly. so i dunno.
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[Swimmy]

There are two notable things about those videos.

1) They've added another context for interacting with things: Samus's left hand. In some ways it looks a little forced to go with the Wiiiiiiii, but it can alleviate one of MP2's biggest problems, which was that everything was designed to react to the morph ball or the gun, for absolutely no reason. (MP1 at least had a reason.) Unfortunately, they still haven't figured out how often this should be used, as HJ pointed out: what's with the Space Station in which all the doors are shoot-to-open?

2) The new grapple ability adds yet another context--a really freakin' sweet one. Unfortunately, it looks like they haven't realized the potential of it. Pulling away shields from enemies is so bland. Why not their weapons? Why not their jetpacks? Why not. . . them? Why not pull powerups to you? Grab objects and lasso them around to lob them at enemies? It could be as versatile as the gravity gun in HL2, which would almost excuse the complete lack of Metroidness for the sheer fun it is to play with. But it looks like they didn't go that route.

Not psyched. But then, I don't have a Wii anyway.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[dessgeega]

they give you a hand to open doors with and put you on a space station full of doors that only open when shot with a laser?

that is almost hilariously bad design.
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[Harveyjames]

The only thing that could make this game worse is if in level 3 you had to use Samus's wiimote-enabled left hand to J/O Dr. Spock. While a 11025hz sample of 'Illogical, captain' played repeatedly from the Wiimote speakers.

[helicopterp]

[dessgeega]

jason scott has posted a teaser trailer of forthcoming text adventure / interactive fiction documentary get lamp.

also fucking space giraffe is coming out in like a couple of hours.
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[Lestrade]

That trailer is excellent. When/how is this being released? Thanks for the link, Dess.

What's with the CBC and their game coverage lately? Game worlds could help epidemic studies

[Shapermc]

[Jason Scott]