The Gamer's Quarter

kirkjerk · . Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1227

I am so excited about the Bangai-O Spirits I could cry.

Or maybe it's because of how the Red Sox are doing 3 or so innings in.

THey're in Japan JUST LIKE ME, for a few more days.
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daphaknee · Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:19 am Post subject:

did you take lots of pictures

kirkjerk · . Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1227

daphaknee · Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:47 am Post subject:

your rss feed is not working on my mac

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

I accidentally wiped my Mother 1 save state :(

I was just past the Ghost House.

dhex · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 8:56 am Post subject:

how long is neverwinter nights 2?

i think my age and my general suckage at games causes me to take three or four times the amount of work anyone else might require.
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sediment · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:01 am Post subject:

I managed to knock the core campaign and most sidequest elements out in...

probably 12ish-16ish hours? I was going to check, but I think I purged my savegames in a fit of rage. I just remember it seeming kind of short toward the end. Like there's a build in the first couple chapters that took a while and promised length, and then the end went really, really fast.
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dhex · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:20 pm Post subject:

jesus i fucking suck hardcore or something.
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daphaknee · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:40 pm Post subject:

guys i am drill dozing through everything it has megaman music and cute platforming and is relaxing and easy!

i think i just really like the music and the cartoony graphics and shifting gears on my drill

worth ten dollars!

sediment · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:00 pm Post subject:

i could be wrong, dhex, it's been like five or six months since i played it and i really wasn't fond of it by the end.
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helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

i became really mad at drill dozer the first time i played it after i inadvertently cycled through a level three times because i couldn't find the exit.
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Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

Yeah I didn't have a whole lot of fun with Drill Dozer either :(

Redeye · . Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 986 Location: filth

I took a long time even though i hated it.

Obsessive compulsive or something.

Nwn 2.

I am referring to.
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helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

whatever redeye, we all know that the fallout kids froth for drill dozer
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SuperWes · Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 6:11 am Post subject:

So I'm still playing Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 and it's continuing on its streak of goodness. There's a level that takes place in the Las Vegas convention center during, get this, a Major League Gaming convention. So it's basically a shooter level with a huge lan party layout. Pretty sweet! It surprisingly doesn't come off has hokey either.

I got Crisis Core last night for $20 after some wheeling and dealing. It's surprisingly good! If you already don't like FFVII it definately won't change your mind, but if you like/liked it I'm prepared to say that it's the first part of the resurrection project that's actually worthwhile!

Advent Children is possibly the single worst movie I've ever seen, but this seems to almost make up for it!

The things it does well are:

*Streamline combat so that it happens right on the overworld and doesn't last long.
*Make combat very action oriented without actually requiring action gamer skills.
*Actually has an interesting, emotionally driven story that's only slightly more melodramatic than it should be.
*Really pretty!

Basically everyone here would hate it except Swimmy and Lestrade.
-Wes
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sediment · Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:30 am Post subject:

Advent Children is better than Ghost Ship.

I ended up getting a copy of Crisis Core while in Egypt (5 pounds = $1, and it was... 5 pounds) so I have always never intended to play it, but might end up doing so.
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simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

So I finished Call of Duty 4 single player, and I was making some toast in the other room while credits rolled, then I came back in and found myself on a plane with some terrorists and a hostage. Was there some backstory to this brief encounter I missed out on?

Also, fuck this game for basing its online multiplayer around an RPG progression system. Don't they know how much I shouldn't be wasting my time with this?

This also means I've completed every PS3 game I own, which feels kinda nice when I take a look at the giant stacks of DS/GCN/Wii/PC games sitting around.

Other than the PS3 stuff and related demos, Shiren. Lots of it. I keep running down the battery on my DS, which hasn't happened... ever?
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daphaknee · Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 3:11 am Post subject:

i might play jak 2 based on everyones hate for it, just becuase im a masochist

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

Mario Galaxy. If you beat best time on the Loopdeswoop galaxy, warp stars apear and you get a special flythrough of the level, and you get to meet all the penguins!

Also, I love how it's really me punching Bowser around that planet on the boss levels.

Intentionally Wrong · Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 1:27 am Post subject:

Well, hell. I just finished Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicle: Ring of Fates for Nintendo DS, and now I don't hate action RPGs anymore. I guess I can fix that when Fable 2 comes out.

daphaknee · Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 12:13 pm Post subject:

final fantasy tactics for the psp is a lot harder htan the psx version

like i think its creeping up to try to be more like nippon ichi or something? im at this battle where there are these two fucking nights who INSTANTLY KO my characters, i have to grind! id ont want to fucking grind!

i dont remmeber this battle even being in the fucking psx version?!

why!

Lasa · . Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 128

Finished Rocket Slime, it managed to be quite charming and engaging despite at no point offering any challenge.

JasonMoses · . Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 407

Phantasy Star Complete Collection's new features are pretty cool!

extrabastardformula · . Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 295

The DOS thread has me picking up Might and Magic III again. I frgot how intimidating starting out was!
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dhex · Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 9:34 pm Post subject:

there's nothing more tedious than the old school sometimes.
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ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

SuperWes · Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 8:45 am Post subject:

I've been playing Wow.

FUUUUUUUUCK!!!!

-Wes
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daphaknee · Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 10:40 am Post subject:

wes stop it

daphaknee · Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 10:40 am Post subject:

is this why the banners havent been updated? becasue you're playing fucking wow?

ApM · Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 3:14 pm Post subject:

I finished Grim Fandango yesterday. It peaks in year two, unfortunately. I think what makes me like Rubacava so goddamn much is the seamless way that the game makes Manny's life completely different after the "One Year Later" cutscene in ways that actually matter to the player.

Year one ends with Manny finagling a job as a janitor in a diner in Rubacava, a town he's just arrived in, and then "One Year Later" he owns the place, which he's turned into a casino, and has integrated himself into the community. You spend the entire section interacting with the people around you, which is phenomenally well-executed, and the only really awful puzzle is at the end. (It's pretty morally awful, too; a woman is murdered, and you have to track down the thing she was killed over and give it to the man who killed her in order to steal some tools from some socialist bees. The killer gets his in the end, but Jesus, Manny, that is an ugly thing to do.)
Year two ends with Manny leaving on a ship, and then "One Year Later", he's captain of that ship. But as soon as the player receives control, his entire crew is killed and he loses the ship! And what happened to the old captain? (Who shows up again later, I might add.) Not explained, doesn't matter. Nothing important to the player happened in that year!

This section is more or less bouncing from setpiece to setpiece, with lots of tricky, vaguely-plausible physics puzzles. Very few of the people around me interacted with each other; there was one interesting relationship that didn't involve me. Some of the setpieces are pretty awesome -- they're a one-on-one scythe-on-scythe skeleton battle on a fucking submarine at the end -- but most of the time I wished I was interacting with people instead of machines.
Year three ends with Manny escaping from one location, and then "One Year Later", he's just finished a very long slog to arrive at another location. You end up solving a single puzzle there before heading back to more familiar places, and that puzzle is seriously obtuse; it's one of the only things I remembered about the endgame from when I finished it the first time years ago.

Spoiler: You have to hang a mug filled with foam on a mug tree, then put an oily rag in a toaster, which causes the toaster to catch fire and some demons to spray it with a fire extinguisher. If you were paying close attention at the beginning of year one, you know that this causes a serious chemical reaction! JESUS CHRIST TIM SCHAFER DON'T PULL THAT SHIT ON ME.

After that nonsense you're herded through more setpieces. Some familiar characters show up, many with no explanation as to why they're there. Your interactions with people are brief and linear; they show up, you get what you need from them, they disappear.

In Rubacava, there's a sense that your interactions with people are two-sided; you're helping them out, and they're helping you out. Now, there's never the fetch-quest "helping this guy out to help that guy out to help this other guy out to get a trinket and all three requests are things that these guys could have just fucking done themselves" bullshit anywhere in the entire game, which is nice. But the second half of the game feels like nobody really wants anything from me; it's all about tricking them into doing what I want them to do.

Before I started replaying, I remembered more or less everything about the first half of the game. I honestly wasn't sure I'd finished it, I remembered so little about the second half of the game. But every time I saw something new, I'd get a little twinge of recognition, and then... nothing. I would remember that I'd been there before, but it would never trigger anything further; no remembered puzzle solutions, no "oh yeah, this next part was great". Even the parts that were great were so short and wrapped with dumb puzzles that they just kind of faded away. The sequence where you get the florist to give you a gun is incredible, but the puzzle surrounding it is really badly clued, and there would have been much more to gain by making it easier to solve vs. making the player feel clever for having figured it out.

Anyway. Grim Fandango: Half incredible, half forgettable.

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

I should play it.

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

just fyi, i'm unbanned from xbox live!
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Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

How did you get banned?

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

I owed microsoft $21.
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dhex · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 7:34 am Post subject:

dear bioware:

if you're going to feature big climatic battles where party ai is needed to actually carry out a ridiculously long item usage, you should probably make sure they actually, you know, finish said task instead of twiddling their thumbs while immortal jackasses make mincemeat of my dudes.

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

n+ is very difficult. But addictive. The creators don't know what a difficulty curve is, though. This is very much a programmers game, rather than a designers game, too! Just like Abuse.
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sediment · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 8:23 am Post subject:

dear dhex,

as i'm sure you may have noticed, we have never cared to develop extensive or intelligent party member AI, and in fact this is because we ran out the budget right before developing ally intelligence.

dreadful sorry that we'll never fix this issue,
bioware
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SuperWes · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 9:35 am Post subject:

Good god, this Warcraft game is addicting. If anyone wants to get addicted, I'm a lv. 11 Hunter on Thunderlord and a Lv. 13 Warrior on Jadenar (sp).

-Wes
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Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

I don't

I would not like that at all

dhex · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 9:49 am Post subject:

dear bioware:

why must you be this way? without the siren call of the console forcing your standards into the heady realms of semi-literate lesibanic titillation, surely assets that would have been spent on picking up media hits and fox news tie-ins could have been put forth to fixing this 'tarded ai? your target audience is nerds, shut-ins and the obsessive compulsive, after all.

also, why does mask of the betrayer run 50% better than the OC? is this related to the two hours of patching i did when installing it?

regrettably yours...
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ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

Neverwinter Nights 2 was made by Obsidian Entertainment, the same company that made Knights of the Old Republic 2. At least, I think NWN2 is what you're finishing up. Feel free to write Bioware about how sucky Jade Empire is, though.
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dhex · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:26 am Post subject:

dear dhex,

learn to read.

love,
dhex
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ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

If you read your post and then look at your avatar, you then begin to truly feel what a squirrel goes through.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

So it turns out I'm not really that hot for N+ and I wish XBLA gave refunds or exchanges.
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helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

gamefly brought me Call of Duty 4 and Skate. in the same week.

Skate. is as elegant a game as I've seen made out of an "extreme" sport, even with its loud advertisements and cutscenes. I don't know how to describe it best other than that its take on skating, its perspective, strikes the right cord. The focus on the skater's lower-body feels comfortably appropriate. How refreshing that the designers dared to choose that unorthodox point of view. And the analog controls work beautifully--finally, something more than steering and choosing. In Skate., the left stick controls the skater's hips/upper body while the right analog stick moves his feet (and, by certain association, the board). This scheme directs gameplay to an exercise in negotiating changes to the skater's center of gravity, a style that yields much more interesting (and, I assume, skaterly) results than mechanized button-pressing.

I look forward to a sequel--the game suffers for all its replication of urban/suburban sprawl and would excel with a tighter setting.

Am I the only one who likes the career mode better than free skating? I need the prompts to guide me around the expansive environment.

Call of Duty 4 doesn't connect with me as much. I think it's equally the fault of the game's on-rails-like set pieces and my own idiocy with the controller's many functions.
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Redeye · . Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 986 Location: filth

@dhex

If you order party to attack and someone is reading the True Name scroll, they may stop reading and start doing the new command.

Or just stop.

Just individually control everybody and shut off all automatic shit.

It'll still be annoying when they don't defend themselves when attacked, but it's the best way.

I wonder if Ethereal Jaunt/etc. would remain functional while using the True Name scroll.

Then you would only have to fight a little.

Blade Barrier/Mass Regen help in those special fights.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Guys I don't really hate n+, it was just frustrating me. But it certainly could have been improved! Also some of the levels are really tedious, because they aren't cleverly designed, it's just backtracking. One level had me going back and forth over a bunch of obstacles four times to open and access the exit. Lazy design!

I also tried THE CLUB demo which is a pretty interesting game, I could see myself enjoying it. It really needs to be more in your face though, like when you're going really well it should be all like GOD LIIKKEE like in UT, and the weapons need to be WAY more satisfying. Also, it's a little too GHETTO for my tastes. But I still find the idea interesting and might pick it up when it's cheap.
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:52 am Post subject:

I finally played Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, relatively well. It's generally smooth until I enter an area full of trees, it starts getting a bit choppy there. Bethesda should get an award for those trees they are by far the best looking trees in a game. Really. If you haven't seen Oblivion's trees you're really missing something.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

It sure is a pretty game! It's also the best game in the series in terms of polish and gameplay/mission design, though I find the world and story rather boring (plus the Oblivion Gate nonsense is boring as hell). I'd like to see Morrowind in the Oblivion engine.

I should note I never played Arena or Daggerfall, though. Apart from being bigger, more naked and more random and buggy, how do they compare to the later titles? I've always been interested.

The spin-off games were pretty good! Battlespire and Red Guard.
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