The Gamer's Quarter

Mister Toups · Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 11:15 pm Post subject:

I recommend closing your DS and devoting your full attention to amelie?
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

I've already seen it a few times, my mom was watching it for the first time and I had to explain what was going on every now and then.

Mister Toups · Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 11:21 pm Post subject:

oh, okay.

well whatever you do, don't play scurge: hive. that game fucking sucks.

seriously.

anyway if you aren't enjoying contact now you won't ever enjoy it. it doesn't magically get "better". It just... is what it is. I will say that it's a good game to play while doing something else though.
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

I think I would enjoy it more if I had any fucking clue who any of these characters are, where they come from, or what I'm supposed to be doing other than collecting cells. The label system (with two types of labels) confuses me and if there are cooking and fishing mini games I'm missing them entirely.

Mister Toups · Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 11:33 pm Post subject:

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Clubhouse Games

I'm pretty happy with Clubhouse Games, however I share some of whathisnames problems with the game.

I've been playing through the stamp mode, and I like how they make you play through all the games from most basic to most complex. It's making me interested in games I had little interest in or I haven't played before while learning them at the same time. The rules explain each game pretty well, making them easy to learn (but hard to master). However! It's a pain in the arse playing games that you just aren't interested in. I got sick of Cheat (known as I Doubt It inside the game, which is the first of many games with new, less offensive or copywrite infringing names), mainly because the game takes frickin ages to end. You can't go back to games you've previously won to earn stamps for games you hate/aren't enjoying which is annoying. It's also stupid that you some games can only be unlocked through stamp mode. EVERY game should be available from the fucking get-go. Fortunately, not that many are locked, but still.

The CPU also plays too fast, which was half the problem with cheat. I couldn't click CHEATER! before the CPU and in pretty much every game, the cpu players just move to fast that I can't keep up with what the hell is going on and I get dizzy trying to watch. They really needed to let the player slow down the speed, or even make an option to emulate a human taking the time to think (as long as it's not as long as my dad).

Also, as whathisname mentioned, not all engines are created equal. They are all functional, but some are just more fun than others. I wish rolling dice was more fun, for example! But the interface is nice, clean, easy on the eyes, fast and pretty much great. I love the games that involve sliding things around, be it cards or pieces. The sound and music is unoffensive, some tunes are even nice to have in the background but I usually play with my own music, as with any other card/board game. The game selection is great, I like how they included really silly, basic ones in addition to the super complex ones like Chess. In addition to board and card games, we have things like soda shake, bowling, darts, mahjong, escape... the variety is great and most of them are executed in a way that makes them fun, even if playing bowling on the DS feels really bland after playing it on the Wii., but the card and board games are obviously the more serious games and things like darts and more diversions than anything, if you want to take a break from thinking and test your stylus skill. Unfortunately, these games seem to be the most popular online, and I kept bumping into people who are way too good at darts and hit the middle constantly.

I haven't played through all the games yet, but so far they all seem pretty great but it's dissapointing that blackjack and poker are nerfed, since those are two games I wanted to play quite a bit. The game lets you change the rules for most of the games, but unfortunately you can't do much with poker and blackjack. They included rules just aren't as fun - you are allowed to go into negative funds and it plays for a certain number of rounds rather than until all but one player goes bust. I guess it made programming AI for them easier, but they should have let you play the REAL way online.

Unfortunately, playing this thing online is pretty terrible. It's a matter of picking a game and hoping that someone else out there happens to want to play the same one, so it takes lots of luck. They should have just let you see a list of games people are wanting to play and you can just join in one instead having to jump in and out of games hoping there is one that both you and others want to play. However, it's great that you can play this locally with one cart, I did so at christmas with some relatives and it was great. I also hope others get this game so we can exchange friends codes and take the guess work out of playing online.

I've yet to try the mission mode and don't care if it sucks, because I'm honestly not interested in it at all, I just want to play the games in vanilla mode. Dess, you should get this! It's cheap.

Anyway, as you can see there are a couple problems that I hope are fixed in any further editions, but on the whole it's a pretty great package, especially at the budget price. If you are looking for a nice collection of games like this, I highly recommend it! Especially if you want to exchange friend codes!

Tetris DS

While visiting my family, I discovered my auntie and her daughters play tetris quite often. I also discovered that my auntie is pretty fucking good. The kids kept sulking because we lasted so much longer than them, so we let them join our teams to make it more fun for them, but in the end my auntie and I just fought each other. I eventually came out on top, but only by one game. That last game went on for like ten minutes, and it was so tense. Apparently my auntie was shaking towards the end and I was getting a little on edge myself, especially when I almost lost. I want to visit her all the time now! I haven't met a good player locally.
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Pijaibros · Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 11:14 am Post subject:

helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

I went to EBgames today expecting to buy God Hand or Sega Genesis Collection or Yoshi's Island DS or a used copy of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Somehow I walked out with 3 Game Boy Advance Games.

I started out with the gameboy Oddworld game. I played for maybe ten minutes before deciding that it was really weird and that I ought to wait to play it until late at night when my brain is more attuned to it. I'm not sure I'll like it.

I also picked up Gunstar Super Heroes. It's amazing.

Finally, I have just started a game of Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga.

What a fun, sexy day for me.
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Ericb · . Joined: 26 Dec 2006 Posts: 5

After a rough college semester and a lot of soul searching about theater, i'm finally enjoying this vacation with some random games.

Mostly i'm trying to find my way through the original Zelda. Up to Level 5 it's been an amazing experience, the design is beautiful, very fluid gameplay and all. I just had to readapt myself to the response speed of a NES game; if i try to swing the sword too fast i actually waste time since you have to wait for the enemy to stop blinking to take more damage.

By the way, in level-6, the room where you have to face both orange and blue Wizzrobes, plus two or three Like-Likes WHILE trying to avoid being touched by the Bubbles... that's just bs. I don't think the game should challenge the player so much without being able to provide the kind of response and complexity of commands and directions necessary to at least get by unharmed, with the proper amount of skill.

I've just cleared that dungeon, and so far it's been the only moment in the game where i actually didn't enjoyed playing. And that about an 1986 NES game is saying a lot.

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

I'm playing Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty in Hard mode, and I'm not sure why. The tanker part could have been better and longer, Big Shell is boring, though I enjoy the Arsenal Gear conspiracy, which keeps me interested in the upcoming fourth game. Its best part is definitely once everything goes pomo mindgame on you.

I guess I'd like more surreal psychodramas in my video games. Any recommendations?
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

dessgeega · Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:31 pm Post subject:

i've been playing hatena satena on the gba. it plays like a combination of picross and minesweeper: numbers tell you how many tiles of each color are in each row and column, but not their relative positions. rather, each uncovered tile will tell you how many neighboring tiles are the same color as it. (by default you move the cursor over a tile to reveal its number; there's an option to have every tile on the board with missing neighbors display its number at all times, which really should be turned on at the beginning.) i've completed the first set of puzzles for each character (there are four), including gifts. i feel like i'm starting to work out some strategies, but i havn't been able to entirely eliminate guesswork yet. starting is the hardest part.

and i've been playing some ds mechwarrior game which was my sister's i-really-have-no-idea-what-to-get-you gift (my mother got nintendogs). it has high production values but isn't terribly compelling. i'm kind of averse to 3D games on portable machines.
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SuperWes · Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 5:34 pm Post subject:

I've been playing Ridge Racer 7 (on the PS3)!

It's pretty much the same thing as Ridge Racer 6, but there's a lot more structure and a few more courses that happen to be a whole lot more impressive than the others. What's startling is the effect that something as little as a bit more structure can do for the game.

In Ridge Racer 6 you had a big grid of courses and difficulties you were trying to fill in. You could choose how much or how little of the grid to fill in at once, but you were always just filling in the grid. With Ridge Racer 7 you're racing pre-set course sets and individual course missions as part of an overall racing circuit. For some reason it's much more compelling. It feels like you're actually part of a world rather than simply trying to get as much of the game "finished" as you can. It also looks incredibly amazing on my new TV.

I'm also kind of playing through Resistance, but it really doesn't seem to do anything too special so far and I'm finding it a bit too "army fps" for my tastes. I'll probably finish it eventually on co-op, but I don't see myself ever finishing it in single player. I know they're not the same game or anything, but It's no Gears of War by any stretch of the imagination.

-Wes
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Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

I went to Toys 'r Us today and they had a bin full of $10 games. I picked up Samurai Champloo, Another Code and Gunstar Super Heroes for $10 a piece. They also had Drill Dozer and Sigma Star Saga but I already have copies of those. I woudl have bought Metal Gear Acid 2 if they had it in stock.

They also had Wii remotes (everyone was still out of the console) so I bought that to play with DarwinRemote and because I still have yet to see one in a store in California.

I'm giving up on Contact after talking with Dess.

helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

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

Pijaibros · Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 11:38 am Post subject:

dessgeega · Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 4:42 pm Post subject:

i found out yesterday that there's a super famicom port of syvalion, a totally ridiculous and wonderful taito arcade title. the existance of a port is kind of incredible given the graphical requirements of the game but victor - the development house taito commissioned for this mighty task - totally pulled it off. the game looks totally gorgeous and close to the arcade. victor are obviously sfc graphics wizards, since their logo - the most ridiculous i've seen since interplay's playstation-era laser-carves-our-logo-on-a-giant-emerald-monolith-in-space or cyan's riven-era globe logo - spends like ten minutes flying over towns and through rivers and flames.

but i further discovered that the game got an inexplicable european release, and that this version has the most amazing japlish ever. stuff like "if you release the button, fire flames are stored" and "light blue shining VARIA is indestructible". and, holy shit, this:

so yes, you play a giant, fire-breathing robot dragon in this game. it's sort of like what the snake game would be if it were a free-scrolling maze shooter. in a weird way, it's also sort of like the shooter version of cameltry, in that both games are about navigating mazes with somewhat unorthodox controls, trying to accumulate points while fighting a time limit and avoiding obstacles. i described it as such to cycle, who was on my internet-phone at the time, and this prompted him to finally give cameltry a spin (ho ho).

and this prompted a discussion of which games actually apply mode 7 in a meaningful way to their gameplay. this led me to play mohawk and headphone jack for the first time. wow, that game has so many good ideas - the second stage has a mobius strip you can run on, forever, and a bonus stage features a tiny little prince-esque planet you can run around - it's a shame it's so repulsive and unplayable. enemies are as game-breaking as in sonic rush. then cycle brought up s.o.s., which i immediately realized i needed to replay.

if you're unfamiliar with s.o.s., it's an incredibly ambitious title - the opening credits are presented as film credits - about trying to escape a titanic-esque capsized, sinking luxury liner. the ship starts out upside down, and during the hour (real time) you have to escape it flips on its side, catches fire and floods with water. drowning or flaming or falling or getting clocked on your head by falling furniture docks some of your time. you spend most of your time climbing hallways, swinging from upside-down stairs, searching for survivors and trying to figure out where the hell you are.

yeah, the game has a lot of flaws. you get a map, but it's not labelled and stops showing your position after the engine explodes and the ship flips on its side. and most of the places you travel are identical corridors with identical staircases and identical doors leading to identical passenger suites. it's realistic, but not very focused. and it's very easy to lose what survivors you find, since their pathfinding is not amazing. for what it is, though, it's brilliant and definitely worth stumbling through a few times. truth: i have never managed to escape the ship, survivors or none, not even once.
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Six · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 313 Location: montreal

I love S.O.S. dearly, for all its flaws. It's given me more cold-sweat "oh shit oh shit" moments than any game in recent memory. I really like how it encourages refinement through replay, too - I can escape the ship almost every time now (though I still haven't managed to save anyone.)

There are a few tricks that seem to help get around the poor pathfinding, and once you learn the path to the exit (or at least start to get an idea of the layout) it becomes much more interesting.

I've actually been hankerin' to record a playthrough. This might be a good excuse!

Also, re: Syvalion:

I've never encountered Engrish so... singable.

purplechair · . Joined: 28 Mar 2005 Posts: 378 Location: in my pants

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

I'm friends with like the greatest Tetris player, ever. He's number one in pretty much every Tetris clone that offers an online score table. And not by a small margin, but by like several thousand points.

I think he is a cyborg sent from the future... to defeat us in Tetris.
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dessgeega · Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 7:46 pm Post subject:

dessgeega · Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 4:30 am Post subject:

i just reached the escape route for the first time, with redmund beard! unfortunately, i got what seemed decidedly like a bad ending.
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dessgeega · Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:35 pm Post subject:

i also broke four million points in syvalion. i didn't spend a lot of time with the game when i first encountered it in taito memories, just because there were so many other games on the disc that distracted me. it's amazing, though, because it's essentially a roguelike shooter.

each stage (unless you're playing the "basic" mode with fixed maps) is randomly constructed out of little setpiece rooms and tunnels filled with obstacles, while chainable enemies gate in periodically to get in your way. and it manages to be really well-balanced, even in terms of difficulty progression: which stage a random maze is determines how populated it will be, and bosses are actually constructed by combining a movement pattern plus firing pattern plus any late-game abilities like teleportation.

but maybe the best part is the story fragments that appear between stages. they're chosen psuedorandomly; it's a lot like an inconsistant choose-your-own-adventure book, where taking the bus means you end up fighting a bunch of aliens building a doomsday gun while riding your bike means the aliens are turning people into robots instead.

partially they're great because of the wacky translation but mostly it's because of how hillariously self-aware they are. like if you earn an extra life it's because you met your clone and the story becomes about an alien cloning conspiracy. there's also brilliant stuff like "her untimely death made me realize just how important it is to DODGE ALL ENEMY FIRE." and sometimes tiat and/or proco join up with you and fly behind you in the silver hawk as an option ship, which is the kind of taito fanservice that makes me wet.

also i need the soundtrack right now zuntata 4 life
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dessgeega · Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 12:26 am Post subject:

bad end in s.o.s. with the doctor in 15:29! oh, adela!

and five million in syvalion.
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helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

-Yoshi's Island DS-

Any of you who pay much attention to me know that the original Yoshi's Island is one of my favorite favorite favorite games. If I had to make a top-5 list, it would absolutely be there. This one started off great. And by that I mean the title screen was great. The music for the baby-abducting storyline was identical to the music that plays in the original game, the far-off, rotating mode-7 island was just as I had remembered it except that it was textured a little more and actually looked better, and the sound effects for when you choose your game were spot-on.

Then I started to play, and the whole experience started to falter. Through the first world, the game plays like a remix of the old game. Parts of stages are eerily similar--they go undergound in the same places, they have hidden question marks in places I felt that I had already discovered them, and some whole constructions are just plain identical. Of all the problems I have met with so far, however, this is the least worrisome.

I am okay with a remix of an older game, but a lot of the new stuff in Yoshi's Island DS is just plain miserable. The extra vertical height due to its action taking place on both screens ruins an important aspect of the game. Because your view is so huge, you can see the secrets before you get to them. It kills the sense of discovery; it's as if your moves are planned out in advance. Also, the bar in the middle of the two screens is really distracting. There's a giant blind spot where you should be able to see, and I have already missed enemies and coins because they were in the dead zone where it is physically impossible to see them.

The second huge problem so far is the baby-switching. The same gameplay concept cripples this game as cripples the Banjo-Kazooie series, Donkey Kong 64, and Psychonauts. You have to 'unlock' new moves to be able to experience the levels to the fullest. I can't tell y'all how upset I was on the third level of the game, I couldn't get a flower or red coin or something because I wasn't allowed to use baby Peach. If I need something in order to complete a level, why can't it just occur contextually? Like the levels with watermelons in the original Yoshi's Island: I didn't have to unlock the ability to spit seeds, the watermelons were just there, and I had to figure out how to use them.

Finally, the music is heinous. It especially suffers in comparison with the tunes from the original. But even taken independently, it is the worst videogame music I have ever heard. It's aggressively, noisily bad. Everything that was fun and catchy has been tossed in favor of what I will call "Canned Whimsy" because it sounds just generically cheerful-esque enough for pre-schoolers. In fact, the sound in general sucks. The noises for a lot of the in-game actions have changed, and most of these new sounds are overly loud, and sound inappropriate in a "why-does-it-sound-like-an-arena-imploding-when-I-shoot-an-egg-through-sand" kind of way.

Except for one particularly delightful little bonus area in which Yoshi hops into the pouch a silly-faced, rubbery kangaroo that automatically bounds around wherever you point it, the game has an uncomfortably processed feel to it, as if it were born in a board meeting. The basic gameplay (which has remained largely unchanged from the original) is enough of a hook to keep me going at it a little longer, but so far it mostly tries too hard and comes up short.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

dessgeega · Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 5:22 pm Post subject:

"...was a high priest of trog."

i am getting pretty capable of playing berserkers in crawl. the most crucial things are managing hunger and praying as often as possible while killing. the sub-dungeons totally demolish me, but that doesn't stop me from plunging into the lair every time i see it. someone port this game to my gp2x already.
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dessgeega · Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 2:39 am Post subject:

in s.o.s. i came across a survivor named anna who wore men's clothes! she totally did her own thing, too, often showing up at places i was heading before i'd arrived there. i think this was a glitch, though, and i soon lost her, my sister, and this mr. morton fellow i didn't really care about.

i finally found an ending where i got rescued, though. uh, maybe? it was kind of ambiguous. possibly the character i was playing has a secret identity?
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

i should scan and upload an old review i have of it, it explains some of the game mechanics pretty well and has a little profile on each character explaining their background and how they play.
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dessgeega · Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 5:22 am Post subject:

yes you should!

my latest crawl berserker killed sigmund on level two and stole his scythe of orc slaying, enchanted it up to +5,+4, and took it into the orc mines, where i proceeded to slaughter mobs of the creatures in the name of trog. on level three of the mines i was surrounded by a mob of what must have been over twenty enemies (a count near the end tallied fourteen). i entered a berserker blood-rage, remitting my ability to perform any action but attack quickly and mightily. i managed to take out all of the orc warriors, the priests, and all but two of the sorcerers before finally succumbing to the horde. r.i.p. fable, high priest of trog.

this game is fantastic.
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 3:30 pm Post subject:

Stop it girl, you are exciting me about this game.

EDIT: I was playing Streets Of Rage Remake until it crashed in stage 6. I was thinking the game was going to be a bit poo, the same way I think of all remakes, but turns out it's great fun though your partner AI in the 1 player + CPU mode leaves a bit to be desired.
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Six · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 313 Location: montreal

For all this talk of roguelikes, S.O.S. seems to share a few traits with them. It emphasizes the importance of carrying knowledge between playthroughs, and - ah, who am I kidding? It's mainly the sense of crushing defeat each and every damn game.

Lackey · . Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada

I just picked up Gumboy: Crazy Adventures off Steam. After the first few levels I have to say it's far better than the demo suggests. The levels are well designed and the visuals are wonderful. It's too bad that I never feel like I have much control over the character. It's much, much better than in the demo, but still a struggle.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

internisus · . Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 354

That's interesting. I played the free demo and found it extremely disappointing.

Szczepaniak · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 770

dessgeega · Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 6:42 am Post subject:

john have you been drinking
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helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

If it makes you feel any better, I've never heard of you.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

internisus · . Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 354

Uh-oh.

SuperWes · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 2:33 am Post subject:

Hey John, you're cool. The internet's nothing to stress over.

Anyways, I've been playing Valkyrie Profile 2 on my brand new PS3 (via backwards compatibility). It's good! Surprisingly good! I liked the first one, but I thought it was a bit too unrefined and confusing. This one takes all of the systems from the first one, finds a way to make them more puzzle-based and throws in a really strange story that's presented so well it almost doesn't seem as fucking loopy as it actually is. It's one of those games that I can see a lot of people not "getting," but those that do will look back on it in a few years and say, "that was something interesting."

-Wes
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 2:41 am Post subject:

I bought NeoGeo Battle Coliseum totally on a whim yesterday, since it looked quite lonely on the x% off table at EB. The sticker said 25% but it was actually 50% so I got it for twenty five bucks which is a bargain if any. It's fun but looked not nice until I turned the sprite quality up to six since that shit was real fucking blurred otherwise. I have spent more time in the palette editor more than anything else, changing costume colours.

It's Capcom vs. SNK 2 all over again.
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SuperWes · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 2:46 am Post subject:

Lackey · . Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada

SuperWes · Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:45 am Post subject:

Tried a bit more Valkyrie Profile 2 yesterday and am getting kind of disappointed in it. As you get further into the game it seems to get a lot more difficult and disjointed. The battles are unbalanced and just a little bit of bad luck can put you in a situation where you get your ass kicked badly, but even if you almost die it doesn't even matter since most enemies can be avoided by freezing them anyways.

So I took that out and put in the US version of Final Fantasy XII. Holy shit is it an amazing game. I can verify that the game does indeed look like crap when it's running on a PS3 through HDMI, but I can also verify that it doesn't look bad enough for me to go through the trouble of plugging back in my PS2.

Anyway, I'm really, really digging finally being able to play the game in English (my strategy guide help was based on the Japanese version). The voice acting is some of the best I've ever heard, and the story is much more intriguing than it seemed in Japanese. At this point I'm confident in saying that it's my favorite Final Fantasy of all time, and ranks very highly among my favorite games of all time. I adore it.

-Wes
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Swimmy · . Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 990 Location: Fairfax, VA

Hey Wes, my friend bought your guide. That thing is goddamn huge!
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

dessgeega · Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 12:15 am Post subject:

i've finished up every character's second set of puzzles in hatena satena. (spoilers: drama!) i've gotten a much better grasp on strategy now. (i even know where to start.) it's pretty startling, once you figure out some basic rules, how well the "level design" is built around them, often leaving you with the impression the game has anticipated your strategy.

i can complete most puzzles with little guesswork. the exception is the puzzles with a missing color - that is, there are spaces on the grid which you're intended to leave blank. you're not provided with numbers for these spaces; rows and columns that contain them are marked with a single dot. unlike mario's picross / drymouth, though, the number of misses you're allowed is autonomous of the time limit - you can miss up to four times before losing. so there's some room to guess.

i've also been playing bedtime nethack with my gp2x, and i've decided this is the ideal way to play the game. nethack's "dungeons" are really just cozy little pockets of in-jokes, and they go well curled up in bed.
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squidlarkin · . Joined: 10 Dec 2005 Posts: 100

dessgeega · Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 12:51 am Post subject:

been playing loco-motion, a konami arcade title. there's actually some controversy as to who came up with this game first; apparently the blue sky rangers were prototyping a similiar game for the intellivision at around the time konami put out their version.

the game is played on a grid of tiles with one missing, much like the fifteen puzzle. like the fifteen puzzle, you can shift any adjacent tile into the vacant spot, relocating the vacancy in the process and changing your options. in loco-motion these tiles are covered with fragments of train track, and one tiny train engine moving along them. by shifting tiles, you rearrange the tracks, trying to lead the train to stations along the edge of the board (and to cause the occasional enemies to crash into each other rather than your little train).

it's a great little game with lots of charm and plenty of options (you can shift a tile while the train is on it, taking it along, but be sure there's somewhere for the train to land when it reaches the end of the track). there's a gameboy port that saw numerous re-releases, but i've been playing on my gp2x. this game is perfectly suited to tate mode, since the fire button is only occasionally held down (to speed up the train) rather than mashed or tapped with any concern for timing. it makes a very nice portable game.

also judgement silversword.
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dessgeega · Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 7:37 am Post subject:

mega drive emulation on the gp2x is just dandy.

in lord monarch i am currently flailing uselessly against evil overlord geopaldon in 3-3. i was expecting a hard battle after the first two maps in the chapter went so easily, but i wish i was making more headway than i am. it's bad enough that the enemy nations start out as entrenched as they are, but shortly after the battle begins, snow begins to fall, cutting the speed of your troops in half.

successful strategy in this map probably involves securing towns. towns are a feature exclusive to this version of lord monarch (as is the snow). indestructible fixtures on the map, towns periodically produce merchants loyal to the town's sovereign nation. if the merchant reaches that nation's castle alive, that nation gets a hefty monetary boost (greatly helping the war effort). the problem is that merchants are essentially defenseless; any enemy forces between the town and the castle means no money. each of the enemy underling nations in 3-3 has a player-aligned town within its territory. by the time i conquer one of these nation, though, the other two are about ready to roll right over my forces.

in battle mania 2 i briefly attained the shooter rank of "ultimate a!!" i'm comfortable calling this the best shooter on the mega drive / genesis. the only possible problems i could name are that the backgrounds are too bright and detailed and that due to the way that lives work you can get an instant game-over by getting smushed against the side of the screen. that's how i died, actually, in the red-alert high-speed area of stage 6. with eight "lives" remaining. it was worth it though.

and all this from the comfort of my bed.
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Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

So i started playing Devil May Cry because I bought the anniversary collection for cheap and it's one of the series I never spent any time with. The Resident Evil influence is very strong and I'm not sure if I like it or not. The lack of direction and piddly fetch quests you have to do get on my nerves but I guess combat gets more interesting later in the game(?). I got to the third mission where I have to beat the giant enemy <strike>crab</strike> spider and I find myself getting killed very quickly. I'm thinking I'll restart the game and when they try to corral me into Easy Mode I'll let them.

Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 1:03 am Post subject:

You've probably guessed it but that guy is nothing compared to bosses you fight later on. Even in Easy Mode they aren't really "easy".
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