The Gamer's Quarter

[Toto]

Well this Feb is a big, big month for games in Australia.
The PS2 and DS are going crazy. I ask of you denizens of GQ, to cull the weak and save me some money/time/effort by preventing me from playing and buying shitty games. I am including a DS backlog too, to get some opinions on older DS stuff.

PS2:
KoF XI
Okami
God Hand
FF XII

DS:
Kirby Squeak Squad
Hotel Dusk
Star Fox DS
Yoshis Island 2
Trauma Centre
Phoenix Wright 1 and 2
RE DS
Contact
Castlevania DS 1 and 2 (so DoS and PoR)
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon

For the DS, if I'm missing stuff, post about it, because after all the DS is region free and Play-Asia has DS games which can be had significantly cheaper in US version.

EDIT: The reason for the DS renaissance is that my I just got my Uni timetable recently, and it involves quite a bit of hanging around on campus waiting for classes to start. Hence, DS becomes a boon. I knew it wasn't a waste of money getting it.

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

About damn time we got PoR.
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[dongle]

Cut Okami, or rent it and play it for 10 hours until you're well tired of it after the initial splendor wears off. Cut Kirby, Phoenix Wright 2, Star Fox DS. RE DS for historical purposes only. You only want one Castlevania DS, and I'm leaning toward PoR particularly if you played AoS. They're both kind of mediocre, truth be told.

[Toto]

I'm more than happy with no Castlevania DS at all.

[dessgeega]

sqeak squad broke my flash card.

it's not very interesting, aside from the squeak squad scenes (one in each stage). the touch screen sort of clutters the game (it's an inventory of use-anytime health-ups and abilities), even though it ties into the squeak squard bits pretty well. too often when you run into an item you'd like to use your inventory is full of fruit and power-ups you've had no need for, and by the time you clear up space the item will have floated off.

contact is trash.

pokemon mystery dungeon is like shiren but boring.
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[Toto]

Contact is trash, but is it art trash? I've seen Contact divide opinions pretty heavily.

[Cycle]

hey toto how is that scrapland piece coming along
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[dessgeega]

[Toto]

Fair enough Dess. Well played.
Hey Cycle it is coming along pretty good, but not actually. I really need to get on that.

EDIT: Just bought RE DS for 24.80 AUD on Ebay. I gave myself a budget of 30 AUD for the title, and got it for this price, with express shipping no less!

[Harveyjames]

I hear Yoshi's Island 2 isn't that hot. It's developed by some third-party who've decided to stick as close to the original game as possible. Everything they've added (new babies, mostly, which you have to swap between like this is DK64) just serves to make things crappier. Definitely not worth it if you've got the original.

[Toto]

I was pretty sold until "swap between". Stupid idiot Mario 64 DS makes you do that, and I do not appreciate it in the slightest.

EDIT: Bloody hell, the DS is going crazy. Diddy Kong Racing, Winning Eleven DS and Lunar Knights (the Boktai game) were just brought to my attention with a Play-Asia email. Jeez.
EDIT: Also FFVI Advance. Jeeeez.

[Harveyjames]

Diddy Kong Racing was pretty crap. It's all about memorizing where all the boost pads are. Hit all the boost pads to win the match! Whee!

[Malons]

[Cycle]

[helicopterp]

I can't tell you enough not to get Yoshi's Island 2. It's fantastically bad in concept, implementation, even in the way it uses the double screen.

Hotel Dusk is pretty good, as long as you understand what you're getting into. Well, except for one puzzle which requires that you trick your DS hardware.

Okami has a whole lot going for it, but a whole lot going against it, too. I can't remember simultaneously loving and hating a game so much. If you could rent it or track it down used, that would be the way to go.


Finally, I don't know what your DS collection looks like, but it's incomplete if it doesn't have Meteos.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[captaincabinets]

[Harveyjames]

[SuperWes]

I've got almost all of these, so I'll break it down in order of awesome to least-awesome:

FF XII
Phoenix Wright 1
Trauma Centre
Okami
God Hand
Phoenix Wright 2
Star Fox DS
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Castlevania DS 2
Hotel Dusk
Yoshis Island 2
Kirby Squeak Squad
Castlevania DS 1
Contact

Not sure much commentary is needed except to say that your mileage may vary with stuff like Phoenix Wright, Okami, and God Hand.

Phoenix Wright is amazing if you can see yourself getting into a text adventure, Okami is extremely flawed, but beautiful and innovative enough to nearly make up for it, and God Hand is a really sloppy button masher with a lot of challenge and a lot of heart.

And, well, FFXII is among the best games I've ever played, easily the best Final Fantasy ever, and it would be a disservice to miss out on it.

-Wes
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[simplicio]

Serious Budget:
FFXII
God Hand
Trauma Center
and rent Pheonix Wright 1, Hotel Dusk and Okami.

But if you aren't a gamer who's engaged by twitch-reaction-based challenge and systematic perfection, you can leave those latter two off the list. And depending on your feelings on 3D Zelda, Okami may be worth the purchase for sheer amount content alone. Luvcraft wrote some interesting thoughts on it being 3 games compressed into one over on SB. Certainly flawed, but there's lots of worthwhile stuff there too.

I like Portal of Ruin more than Dawn of Sorrows, but I wouldn't call either amazing. If you need a serious DS timesink I guess that's Pokemon Mystery Dungeon from this list, but wouldn't you be better off with something like Meteos really?

[Nana Komatsu]

This thread reminds me a lot of this song.
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[Cycle]

[simplicio]

Dirty tricks are more fun than boost pads though.

And less luck than you'd think, too. I got really damn good at item usage when I 100%ed Double Dash in one sitting, and it makes a world of difference be capable offensively and defensively in addition to driving well.

[Ketch]

Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon is seriously dull, it is like a Rogue-like with all the chaos and cool interactions taken out. (And I'm 22 hrs in). blah.

[Toto]

Thanks for the help guys. Now the difficult part is getting a copy of Phoenix Wright 1 for less than full price.
To eBay!

EDIT: Now the most important part of this threa: finding my DS charger.

[Nana Komatsu]

I think this has been said already, but I don't know that I'd recommend Star Fox DS. It's all right, and the closest to the original formula than has been released in a while, yet it is very repeatitive and the touch screen control never sat quite well with me.
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[Redeye]

[Ethoscapade]

[B coma]

YI2 really is a disappointment. (I bought it knowing it would be!)

To give it some credit, some of the regular stages achieve to the standard of the original but they're few and far between, and most of the time the game is totally content to rip off stage concepts wholesale from the original. I'm at world 4 and here are a few of my impressions:

As I expected, the whole baby switching thing is implemented really poorly. You have a few preset stations for switching between the available kids and certain points in the level, but in the end it will either come down to:

A) Find a path that can be traversed only by a certain baby, and backtrack to the station to retrieve it (wash rinse repeat)!

B) practicing your psychic abilities and know which baby you should be because this particular stage is linear and you can't go back to change!

now, most of the time these paths aren't mandatory (they'll usually contain more red coins or a flower or etc) but honestly, unlike the original YI collecting the extra stuff and finding alternate routes is the only thing that makes most of these stages interesting.

Even now I'm perfectly content with running through a stage in the original game and getting a sub-50 score, because the stages themselves were fun set pieces or at least had a lot of thought put into their design - for instance, that one cave bit where you spend the first part of the level stomping all the down through loose dirt to the entrance of the cave, and once you're there you work your way through a circular path until you discover a cleverly placed lift that springs you into the exit. Heck, even if you didn't like that stage, you probably remember exactly what I'm talking about from that description.

Here the stage designs mostly revert to gimmicks - "here's some wind, grab Peach's umbrella!" or "a section with vines, grab DK!". In the end it makes the stages kind of hard to distinguish from each other. There are a couple of highlights (like the stage that is a system of pipes that connect small islands), but in the end, yeah.

Man, and the bosses are pretty bad so far, with the exception of that fish that tries to psyche you out by only being vulnerable when it's trying to eat you. Unfortunately, he was way too easy to kill.

[B coma]

[helicopterp]

[Harveyjames]

[Swimmy]

Rocket Slime.

BUY IT. LOVE IT.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[B coma]

[Nana Komatsu]

Rent it, if you can. Or buy it used for very cheap.

I say the same thing about Rocket Slime, it's not that great!
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[Ethoscapade]

[Nana Komatsu]

I think of it more as a ski hill. It starts out really high and is quite exciting but it's all downhill from there.
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resetbutton.net: videogames for unattractive people

[Toto]

I have Rocket Slime! It's pretty good, but it's getting worse.
I bought Trauma Center for 46 dollars.
eBay auction for Yoshi Touch and Go ends soon.

[Harveyjames]

[Nana Komatsu]

[dongle]

[Nana Komatsu]

Have you people played more than the first 20 minutes of rocket slime?
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[Swimmy]

Yes. I played it almost nonstop and loved every second.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Nana Komatsu]

That's a lie! You can't have played more than the first 20 minutes because the entire game is the first 20 minutes recycled over and over again!
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[Swimmy]

The same could be said of Dragon Warrior VII. Which is also my favorite game ever.

So!

Edit: The same could especially be said of Katamari Damacy, but it's completely adorable the entire time anyway. Just like Rocket Slime!
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Ketch]

[Ethoscapade]

[Shapermc]

Sorry for being pretty late on this, so I'll go into supersaver mode:

[Toto]

If I find it for cheap, I will get it, just for you Shaper.
Guys I'm going to buy Pro Evoluton Soccer DS and post extensive commentary. If it's good, please buy it and play me online. Please. Especially you Scratchmonkey, you're half the reason I started playing Pro Evo in the first place, with that FKW '06 thread.

[SuperWes]

[Mister Toups]

I played rocket slime for about 2 or 3 hours, got bored with it, picked it up again a few months later and loved every second of it.
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?