The Gamer's Quarter

[helicopterp]

[Nana Komatsu]

[Shapermc]

I just broke into the #1 spot on my Assault Heroes friends list high score chart. My score is only 1/5 of the top score. CHALLENGE ME BITCHES! I wasn't even playing all that well!
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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!"

[Mister Toups]

[Lasa]

Survival Crisis Z is very low-rent looking and has deeply flawed design, but I can't stop playing it.

[ryan]

Lost Planet is putting a hurting on me.

Legend of Heroes III is starting slowly. I thought I recalled enjoying the second one, but it turns out that I was thinking of the Ys PSP port. This game, this one I don't like. Here's hoping to it improving!
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[dhex]

i played doom 3 today for about half an hour. i have no idea why. such a great engine. such bad game design.
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[dessgeega]

nana recently explained to me that burning dreamcast games is a lot easier now than it used to be. consequently, i've been playing zero gunner 2 and border down.

zero gunner 2 is almost an area shooter: your copter (unlike the jets of strikers which must move forward always forward) can rotate and lock aim in any direction, and enemies - which bump rather than kill you when you touch them - can enter the screen from anywhere.

it still has all the psikyo touches i love: the first four stages appear in random order (with bullet rate modified to reflect which order you encounter them in) while the last are fixed, so the opening of the game is different every time (which makes the experience much less tedious when you're restarting the game frequently) while the dramatic conclusion is always the same, it's fast (refreshingly so, for a cd / gd game), the bullet patterns are clever, and all of the bosses turn into robots.

border down is a welcome expansion on metal black's mechanics, even if the characters and setting aren't as memorable as those of that game. you can tell that it's by ex-taito people. and by that i mean that the level design is great. there were times i laughed out loud because the enemy placement was so wicked. i like when that happens.
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[simplicio]

wait, by burning dreamcast games, do you mean there's a way to do it so they don't end up frying your system?

Zero Gunner 2's one of my favorite DC games, and shooters in general. I'm not much of a purist.

[Nana Komatsu]

[ryan]

[ryan]

I started War Front: Turning Point today. You know, even though we're working with an alternative 1940s here, let's not have our mechanics say "Repairing twenty-four seven!"

Please?
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Nana Komatsu]

[Pijaibros]

[ryan]

Keep in mind that I really wasn't a fan of Legend of Heroes 2 at all, so going from that to 'Oh! I was thinking of Ys!' made Ys seem so much better. The PSP version that is. Although I still got some enjoyment out of it, loading and all, though I got rid of it as soon as I could.

The PS2 version was just good times.

War Front is making it hard for me to like it: 'Ha! Ha! Just as long as you tell those English girls to wait for me!'

... just ... just get to the giant robots, okay?
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[The Soviet Onion]

[Scratchmonkey]

I'm guessing it will be a meeting of the paths at GDC.

[elvis.shrugged]

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

God Hand is the funnest shit I have seen from a game of its type for a while, but boy did I have to man the fuck up to play it.
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[dessgeega]

stage 55 in llamatron! my final score was 627,894.

jeff minter's giving the keynote speech for the independent games festival at gdc. shaper wants me to try and set up an interview, but i'm scared. this man is one of my idols!

i'm pretty sure i'm still burning out my dreamcast motor, since the thing was built to play gds and this is still a burned cd.

and i don't think i'm asking too much of rub rabbits. helping men stalk women is not one of my favorite videogame tasks. i did it once for the sake of playing the game, and i'm not interested in doing it again for a game i've already played.
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[Pijaibros]

So you're not going to try out Chulip?

That's a shame. I just picked up a copy. Now to make time for it.

[dhex]

[Nana Komatsu]

[ryan]

Gothic 3 randomly decides that it no longer wants to feel this human emotion called "love." To make sure that I don't become too fond of it, it crashes. You're getting your way, Gothic 3.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Nana Komatsu]

[dhex]

ryan, i've heard gothic 3 sucks anyway. are these rumors true or merely nefarious nefariosities?

[The Soviet Onion]

[dhex]

oh a pox on that, dear sir.

there is nothing tastier than a dead god. or a live one!
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[Nana Komatsu]

[JasonMoses]

[Six]

[Nana Komatsu]

[dessgeega]

llamatron: 752,358 in stage 62.
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[dhex]

wikipedia is indeed a fascinating resource. that princess maker game seems uh yeah



did she have a stroke?
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[Nana Komatsu]

Man, I spent a lot of hours in college playing Princess Maker 2. Those were the days.

I played Excite Truck (finally), and it's all right.
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resetbutton.net: videogames for unattractive people

[Shapermc]

I played the Crackdown demo. It's pretty good for a GTAlike. Listening to Wes try to sell me on the game over the phone gave me a pretty wrong impression of things. The demo itself is also not really too great either. It's one hour of play from the very beginning of the game, and doesn't get interesting until the end of the demo when you start to level up. I would have much rather had the demo only be about 10 minutes long with a really high powered agent.

The concept of GTA+Matrix-esque heroes is pretty good I have to admit. But again, for the first 2/3 of the demo I was wondering just why this was that much different/better than GTA. I kind of want to get it because it has a more GTA2 vibe than it should, and because I haven't really been able to get into a GTA game since I sunk all those hours into GTA3.

The game has a lot of negative points, the least of all that the style/visuals are pretty bad, I have tons of problems with the lock on, The control isn't that precise (though I assume much of this is because they start you out without much of your stats built up), And I already did a really terrible "race" which is one of those things I kind of dispised about GTA3. Oh, this game also uses just about every peice of major game making middleware to have come out since the DC.

I kind of want to support this kind of small company effort though. But then again, I've been semi-boycotting this kind of game for a while.
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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!"

[SuperWes]

[ryan]

[simplicio]

[Shapermc]

[Nana Komatsu]

[dessgeega]

llamatron: 868,846 in stage 64.
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[Nana Komatsu]

I had this 22" TV from my Grandmother's house that I'd brought with me to California thinking I could put to some use. The plan was to hook it up in my bedroom with my NES and Genesis (since the TV didn't have a composite video in). Last night I finally got around to assembling my dresser (where the TV would sit) so today I hooked it all up. Much to my dismay, neither the Nintendo nor the Genesis worked. Neither seemed to be sending a video signal to the TV, or if they were it would flicker a lot. I played with it for 10 minutes worried both my systems were dead, before I got the bright idea to take one of them (the NES) downstairs and hook it up to my other (verfied to be working) TV, where it worked just fine.

So now I have one dead 22" TV and no 8/16 bit goodness in my bedroom. ;_;

Also while testing the NES, I got the sudden urge to play through all of the Mega Man and Mega Man X games in order.
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resetbutton.net: videogames for unattractive people

[Cycle]

So I finally started playing Thief 3 and I finally just played through The Cradle. I actually didn't find it scary at all, despite everyone saying it's OH REALLY SCARY RARR. It was creepy and spooky, and perhaps a little cooky, but not all that scary which was dissapointing. They could have done better in that regard, still a great atmosphere though.

On the other hand, it's brilliant and awesome and super clever, so it's not a total loss.

The plot twist that happens shortly after is also pretty damn awesome. I think I've almost finished the game, it seems much shorter than the other two... this one is also rather different in many ways, despite having the same fundamental gameplay. Then again, it was the same deal with the first two games. Whatever, this game is awesome and the thief series is awesome.
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[dessgeega]

puyo puyo fifteenth anniversary on the ds.

as an "anniversary" edition, this release actually contains three different iterations of the puyo puyo rules: in the first, any chain or combo causes unblockable garbage puyos to fall on one's opponent; in the second (my preferred mode of play), chains can be performed to eliminate garbage puyos from one's "queue" before they drop; the the third are the "fever" rules, where deflecting garbage puyos like this builds a meter that, when full, causes one to enter a high-speed high-combo "fever" mode.

in the main "story" mode, one of these rulesets is randomly selected at the beginning of each stage (along with other effects like periodic screen-flipping or bombs replacing garbage puyos). you can select which ruleset you prefer, though, in any other mode, including a pretty nifty endurance mode where your screen is never cleared and defeated opponents are immediately replaced with more difficult ones.

the game is styled after puyo puyo fever, with characters from that game (including arle) plus a few new ones, but there are unlockable characters who include members of the older puyo cast. you can also unlock new puyo sprites - i have a set of little people who link arms and stand on each others' shoulders. you start with a small selection of sprites that reflect the presentation of the game at various points in its history.

probably the most exciting thing is that the game supports up to eight players at once, and has online wifi play. since the ds has so much screen real-estate between its two screens, you can see all players' screens at any time (the eight-player screen is a little squooshed but perfectly readable - you can even set the sprites for this mode differently if you need ones that are easier to make out).

simcity ds. contains an adorable sprite will wright. he's no dr. wright from the sfc version but still. the game is basically simcity 2000 but the dual screens make it easier to deal with - one screen functions as a simplified planning grid while the other shows a "normal" view of the same area. i don't know if it will see a western release - ea holds the license now - but i would rather play the tower sp anyway.
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[Nana Komatsu]

I like Fever rules if only because the Fever mode adds this element of surprise wherein someone about to die can turn the entire game around by getting a Fever. That said, once I went back to playing without Fever (ie: Dr Robtnik's Mean Bean Machine), I found I'm worse off than I remember ;_;

I have the US release of Puyo Puyo Fever which also supports 8 people off one DS card(!) and we used to play it at work.
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resetbutton.net: videogames for unattractive people

[Mister Toups]

I've been on a strange survival horror kick lately. Played through the first three Silent Hills for FKW (saving the 4th for SF (hi alice!)), then finished RE4, then started RE0. Resident Evil 4 is flat out AMAZING on professional, and so far Resident Evil Zero is turning out to be very interesting. It's maybe the most introverted survival horror game I've played, with lots of strange and innovative mechanics that don't always gel, but when they do the game gets really fucking thrilling. The biggest difference is that you control two characters at once for the entire game. When they are in the same room, you can move both at once with both analog sticks; at any time you can switch between characters with the X button. Additionally, instead of the somewhat strange "item box" in other RE games, in this game you can drop items anywhere, which (despite what some reviews have said) actually has a dramatic impact on the way the game is played, especially when it's combined with the cooperative nature of the game. On top of that, the game is significantly more difficult than other Resident Evil games (health and ammo are exceedingly rare, and the enemies are tougher and more difficult to dodge), so you are forced to exploit the fact that you have two characters (and effectively two sets of life bars and 12 item slots) to survive. The game has many flaws but it also pretty thrilling and isn't nearly as stale as I was expecting it to be. In fact, in terms of gameplay it's probably the deepest "traditional" RE game I've played. I still have to try Code Veronica, though.
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

[Nana Komatsu]

Code Veronica is bland and very much a "resident evil 2 but MORE" kind of sequel. I played through the first half, but it wasn't until I played 2 and 3 that I realized how bland it was.
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resetbutton.net: videogames for unattractive people

[Mister Toups]

[Nana Komatsu]

If you're on a surivial horror kick, you should play one of the Fatal Frame games.

Or D2!
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resetbutton.net: videogames for unattractive people