The Gamer's Quarter

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

I sort of want to play MDK again now. I am reminded of it's spacey visuals.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

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

The level where all the surfaces are reflective but only of the sky, so you're basically just looking at the one image refracted in a hundred different ways, done made my brain hurt. Actually that's about where I gave up playing.

It's a pretty cool looking game though. A bit too much shooting stuff for my liking though.

Actually I don't know why I feel that way since I love Metal Slug and Doom where practically all you do is shoot stuff. Somehow though in MDK it feels boring, like they just shoved in a bunch of stuff for you to shoot for want of anything better to give you to do.

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

I think I know the part you're talking about, with the mirror platforms?

I-I think I stopped playing shortly after that too...
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

dessgeega · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:29 am Post subject:

this time the hydra did not kill me.

however, i later summoned a balrug who did not seem happy about it and tore through two green deaths on its (successful) mission to annihilate me.
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:47 am Post subject:

Maybe you should start a thread on Crawl due to the amount of posts you've dedicated to it in this thread.

I've gone back to Lost Valley even though I made up my mind that I wouldn't about a year ago when I first braved the shit-ass collision detection and the multitude of times it upped an quit on me just when I got past bits I was having many troubles with. I find it oddly compelling for all its frustrations. When I eventually finish it I swear that I will not touch the fucking thing ever again.
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dessgeega · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:53 am Post subject:

Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:58 am Post subject:

I'd do it, like I kind of sometimes do for things I'm interested in if someone else hasn't but I've played jack shit of it so I'm unqualified to.
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dessgeega · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:06 am Post subject:

i probably should, but i'm a little intimidated. after everything i've posted in this thread, how would i start it?
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helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

with a limerick!

There once was a game called Crawl.
Dess played it, and she had a ball.
She'd run and she'd hide
after meeting a hyd-
-ra, though hydras aren't scary at all.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

dhex · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 9:09 am Post subject:

no one lives forever 2. it's hard. but funny. interesting use of the early lithtech engine (fear, etc) a bit boxy, but i think that's the point.
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dessgeega · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 1:08 pm Post subject:

phew.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Lost Planet: I think this game is pretty close to pure bliss. I had no problems with the game (minus the Green Eye boss fight, which was the only part of the game that really hung me up for more than one or two lives). I have also played quite a bit online.

For as much as I really enjoy playing Gears of War online with friends, playing w/o friends is exceptionally hellish for me. Lost Planet was a fucking blast to play online w/o friends because you have modes of play that don’t require teamwork at all.

I beat the main game in about 15 hours (5 of which was probably spent between cutscenes, pausing, and restarts). The main game is good, but I don’t think that the story is anywhere near as good or as important as the game tries to make it. The story is so horribly acted and ripped off from so many sources that it was hard to take it even slightly seriously. I was torn between skipping the scenes because I knew they were pointless, and seeing what I paid for.

The levels alternate between many different environments (shockingly) and usually switching between a mostly VS (robot/mech) level and a human run-and-gun level. I have to say that I liked the human emphasized levels the most. While many of the VS’ are great to use to get from one point to the next and blowing up a lot of shit in the meantime I didn’t like using them as my main combat tool. The large amount and variety of the VS’ were excellent though.

The controls work mostly fine without much tweaking. They do start out way too slow, and based on your preference you will probably want to turn the auto-aim off (especially if you’re going to play online a lot because there isn’t auto-aim online). The way the character moves within realistic parameters in a completely unrealistic way to allow you to control however you want and as fast as you like. It’s pretty great. The reaction of the weapons is also pretty good in relation to your character. Reload and charge times are fairly accurate for compensating the strength of the attack.

Thermal Energy is what runs everything: your health, your robots, and some weapons. You can get T-Eng from just about everything, and if you start running low I suggest getting creative and blowing some stuff up. I only once ran my T-Eng down to zero and it was during a lengthy boss fight while in a VS, I’m honestly not quite sure how so many people have claimed to have run out.

The difficulty is kind of off balance. If you have played the demo many times (I think I played through the whole demo 3 times for each level) you will feel that the game is too easy on Normal. Don’t let that worry you, the game picks up in difficulty. Ultimately I was left feeling like the balance of difficulty was mis-managed. The hardest part of the game for me was halfway through and the game was constantly bouncing between too easy and harder than it should be. When I finished the game it didn’t feel finished (too short), so I picked it back up to play through again in Extreme difficulty, but decided to say screw it and played it online for a good while.

At first online wasn’t so hot. I’m not very good at games when it comes to playing versus other people willing to dive into the controls, techniques, tactics involved with being a top teir player online. Anyways, I jumped onto the Ranked matches online and was pleasantly surprised with how it worked. The ranks within the online game work like an MMO: when you do well in a fight you gain more points which add to your level, doing poorly only lets you climb the ladder slower, you’re never harmed for doing poorly. The higher level you are the more skins you unlock for your characters that you can play online, and then eventually you unlock more characters to use online.

There are four types of mode to play online and all work well for different reasons. Fugitive is the most interesting: the host is the fugitive and all other players need to hunt him down, killing the fugitive wins the game. I played a few of these and they work quite well. It was great hearing all these people I don’t know panicking: “where is he?” “don’t know, but he just killed me near the tower!” “I think I saw him over by the arch.” I have yet to attempt to be the fugitive. There is another mode pretty similar to capture the flag which I only played once and … well, it’s capture the flag. Execution (and team Exectution) is deathmatch, and it’s spectacular under the right circumstances. Some of the levels are really gigantic, so large that even after over a dozen matches on the board I know I still haven’t seen it all. There are also different layouts for each of the maps which you can select (the topography is always the same though): you can have ones with an emphasis on weapons, posts, grenades, and finally mechs. I haven’t gotten use to the mechs yet because I kind of stink at hunting people with them.

The online maps are really fantastic. Aside from the one for the demo (which is honestly the weakest) many have multiple hidden routes, out of the way places to secure a post, and winding passages which layer the maps. The simple change of weapon from guns to mechs will also completely change the manner of tactics and give a new feel to the maps. Many of the maps also include environment change including but not limited to: low visibility snow storms, falling rocks, day/night schedule, rising fog/smoke, and even lava flow. Most of these things can’t be found inside the game itself and shows a level of attention to detail that I haven’t seen in an independent element in a while.

Anyways, the more time I spend with the game the more I enjoy and appreciate it. I was sick all weekend so I couldn’t much leave the couch and got a lot of time to play. A few tips for people wanting to play online: to roll hold the duck button (c-stick by default) and then press jump, and to get a gum grenade off of you just roll.
_________________
“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!"

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Lost Planet: I think this game is pretty close to pure bliss. I had no problems with the game (minus the Green Eye boss fight, which was the only part of the game that really hung me up for more than one or two lives). I have also played quite a bit online.

For as much as I really enjoy playing Gears of War online with friends, playing w/o friends is exceptionally hellish for me. Lost Planet was a fucking blast to play online w/o friends because you have modes of play that don’t require teamwork at all.

I beat the main game in about 15 hours (5 of which was probably spent between cutscenes, pausing, and restarts). The main game is good, but I don’t think that the story is anywhere near as good or as important as the game tries to make it. The story is so horribly acted and ripped off from so many sources that it was hard to take it even slightly seriously. I was torn between skipping the scenes because I knew they were pointless, and seeing what I paid for.

The levels alternate between many different environments (shockingly) and usually switching between a mostly VS (robot/mech) level and a human run-and-gun level. I have to say that I liked the human emphasized levels the most. While many of the VS’ are great to use to get from one point to the next and blowing up a lot of shit in the meantime I didn’t like using them as my main combat tool. The large amount and variety of the VS’ were excellent though.

The controls work mostly fine without much tweaking. They do start out way too slow, and based on your preference you will probably want to turn the auto-aim off (especially if you’re going to play online a lot because there isn’t auto-aim online). The way the character moves within realistic parameters in a completely unrealistic way to allow you to control however you want and as fast as you like. It’s pretty great. The reaction of the weapons is also pretty good in relation to your character. Reload and charge times are fairly accurate for compensating the strength of the attack.

Thermal Energy is what runs everything: your health, your robots, and some weapons. You can get T-Eng from just about everything, and if you start running low I suggest getting creative and blowing some stuff up. I only once ran my T-Eng down to zero and it was during a lengthy boss fight while in a VS, I’m honestly not quite sure how so many people have claimed to have run out.

The difficulty is kind of off balance. If you have played the demo many times (I think I played through the whole demo 3 times for each level) you will feel that the game is too easy on Normal. Don’t let that worry you, the game picks up in difficulty. Ultimately I was left feeling like the balance of difficulty was mis-managed. The hardest part of the game for me was halfway through and the game was constantly bouncing between too easy and harder than it should be. When I finished the game it didn’t feel finished (too short), so I picked it back up to play through again in Extreme difficulty, but decided to say screw it and played it online for a good while.

At first online wasn’t so hot. I’m not very good at games when it comes to playing versus other people willing to dive into the controls, techniques, tactics involved with being a top teir player online. Anyways, I jumped onto the Ranked matches online and was pleasantly surprised with how it worked. The ranks within the online game work like an MMO: when you do well in a fight you gain more points which add to your level, doing poorly only lets you climb the ladder slower, you’re never harmed for doing poorly. The higher level you are the more skins you unlock for your characters that you can play online, and then eventually you unlock more characters to use online.

There are four types of mode to play online and all work well for different reasons. Fugitive is the most interesting: the host is the fugitive and all other players need to hunt him down, killing the fugitive wins the game. I played a few of these and they work quite well. It was great hearing all these people I don’t know panicking: “where is he?” “don’t know, but he just killed me near the tower!” “I think I saw him over by the arch.” I have yet to attempt to be the fugitive. There is another mode pretty similar to capture the flag which I only played once and … well, it’s capture the flag. Execution (and team Exectution) is deathmatch, and it’s spectacular under the right circumstances. Some of the levels are really gigantic, so large that even after over a dozen matches on the board I know I still haven’t seen it all. There are also different layouts for each of the maps which you can select (the topography is always the same though): you can have ones with an emphasis on weapons, posts, grenades, and finally mechs. I haven’t gotten use to the mechs yet because I kind of stink at hunting people with them.

The online maps are really fantastic. Aside from the one for the demo (which is honestly the weakest) many have multiple hidden routes, out of the way places to secure a post, and winding passages which layer the maps. The simple change of weapon from guns to mechs will also completely change the manner of tactics and give a new feel to the maps. Many of the maps also include environment change including but not limited to: low visibility snow storms, falling rocks, day/night schedule, rising fog/smoke, and even lava flow. Most of these things can’t be found inside the game itself and shows a level of attention to detail that I haven’t seen in an independent element in a while.

Anyways, the more time I spend with the game the more I enjoy and appreciate it. I was sick all weekend so I couldn’t much leave the couch and got a lot of time to play. A few tips for people wanting to play online: to roll hold the duck button (c-stick by default) and then press jump, and to get a gum grenade off of you just roll.
_________________
“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!"

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

I picked up Twilight Princess again today and played through the Goron cave. I dunno if I was just playing well, but everything felt really well put together and intuitive about it. Very nice, and the altered perspective (wall/ceiling walking) is always nice.

Ethoscapade · . Joined: 30 Oct 2005 Posts: 276

a_plus · . Joined: 09 Jan 2006 Posts: 252 Location: olympia

over my internet-less break i went through chronotrigger again, just to see if i liked it as much as i used to. i do, and as far as console rpgs go, i think it's the apex (though i haven't played anything that's come out in the past few years).

i've been playing lots of warcraft 3 recently? i have no clue what brought that on, but i'm actually pretty into it. the micromanagement sometimes gets to be too much for me, though, and i don't foresee myself ever playing it multiplayer.
i also downloaded crawl the other day and am starting to just scratch the surface of it! so far it's pretty great. like shiren, it strips away most of the aggravating nonsense from nethack and other roguelikes of its frustrating kind, leaving just fun and fair challenge. with my best character dying at level 5, i haven't run into any unique areas, though, which i kind of miss. nethack and shiren have certain levels that stand out (cities, dwarven mines) and other structures in the dungeon (fountains and so on) that i wish were in crawl. it doesn't quite feel fleshed out enough, yet, but then i DID just start it.

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

During my last year of school last year I played too much warcraft 3. I could never micromanage but if you ignore the Heroes' spells it gets a little easier. We mostly played custom maps (Skibi's Castle, Line Tower Defense, Rape Girl) anyway.
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a_plus · . Joined: 09 Jan 2006 Posts: 252 Location: olympia

i actually did beat the original first part of warcraft 3 a few years ago, then bought the frozen throne and never touched it! i guess what brought on me playing it is that i found it and decided to try and beat it all for reals this time. plus i wanna know what's on that other disc.

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

I've never beaten the campaign, I usually get to the night elves part and get distracted by something shiny. But now I really want to play again, so I'll have to see about digging out my CDs this weekend.

I never beat the story in the Starcraft Brood War but that was only because I didn't want to cheat and couldn't beat it normally.
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a_plus · . Joined: 09 Jan 2006 Posts: 252 Location: olympia

i just got to the orc part of the campaign now! i'm excited to get to the night elves. they were my favorite part.

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

I love the night elves, I would always play them in multiplayer; but the orcs have a special place in my heart <3
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dessgeega · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:01 am Post subject:

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

I have been playing Warioware Twisted! and it is as excellent as people say. I wish there was more to the game though, since I was able to beat most of the story modes in one night. I can see the sheer difference between the games in this one and Touched though.

Today at lunch we ended up talking about Simpsons NES games, and so I just downloaded and played Bart vs. the Space Mutants. I knew this was a terrible game, but I didn't realize how terrible it was!

I might buy an xbox 360 today because I'm fucking crazy like that.
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:30 pm Post subject:

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

I want an Xbox 360 Sad

I'll trade you my wii.

Anyway, I played the hell out of Bart Vs The Space Mutants when I was a child. Looking at the FAQ, I got all the way up to the second last level. I tried playing the game again recently and couldn't get passed the first level. I must have been one hell of a persistant/patient kid.
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:35 pm Post subject:

I never could get past the final stage, by the time I got there I had to return it to the local video hire. Fucking terrible game, the only Simpsons game that is worth a shit is the one by Konami for the arcade.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Hey, have you found episodes of The Zone yet? I was just reading about how it got cancelled (twice) in an old issue of Megazone.
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:53 pm Post subject:

I've found some though most of that has dodgy recording quality due to bad storage and buggered VCRs which like to chew up tapes and whatever I haven't thrown out to make space for more VHS over the years. Some of it is at least recognizable so I've put that aside, you'll get it eventually, I haven't forgotten about you.

Going back through all that shit I must have taped, like, every episode of Animaniacs ever. Which is probably more sad than amazing.
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dessgeega · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 5:03 pm Post subject:

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

dessgeega · Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 5:09 am Post subject:

tenkomori shooting is amazing. it's like a shooter version of warioware, where you're given twenty-second shooting game challenges like shoot 100 planes in a 1942-style game or destroy thirty enemies with three bullets using every extend-style chain explosions or shoot six sushi in the order the customer wants them. actually, it's probably closer to a 2d shooting point blank, and is in fact by namco. which means there are a bunch of namco homages in it, including galaga and xevious stages and a pang-liked pooka-popping game.
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Ethoscapade · . Joined: 30 Oct 2005 Posts: 276

holy god that looks amazing.

works in mame or zinc, i hope?

edit: um - dess? how do you make zinc run games that aren't on its supported list?

DOUBLE EDIT: oh! well! thanks! last i checked, anything system 12 + mame = bad bad news.

TRIPLE XX EDIT SUPERCOMBO: i think this game would be a lot better multiplayer. as it stands, i want to love it, but i don't really love it.

Mister Toups · Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:39 am Post subject:

dessgeega · Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 3:17 pm Post subject:

dessgeega · Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 6:49 am Post subject:

i completed all six courses in rider using the first bike. it's excellent, because the time limit forces you to be at max speed (75 mph) most of the time, yet it's not as impossible to navigate the roads as it is with the faster bikes' max speeds. at the same time, two collisions will put your bike out of commission.

this game totally lets you play however you want, and it's great.
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 3:27 pm Post subject:

Did you do it riding against traffic or with traffic?
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dessgeega · Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 7:09 am Post subject:

baby, i rode with the wind.
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dessgeega · Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:31 am Post subject:

elevator action returns (no-death video of the first three stages). and while i was recording i finally made a video of syvalion.
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Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

Me and my mates got pretty hot at Elevator Action Returns in college. It's such a cool-looking game. My ebay name is still jadthetaff to this day.

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

Enchanted Arms (360): Won't leave me alone. I think I have around 20 hours left to go. No, I won't collect all of the Golems ... but I won't turn down a chance to get one either! Damn this weakness!

I'm still playing Medieval 2 and Death Jr. 2 as well, and enjoying them.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

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

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

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

Yeah I don't know if I should go in on it or not. That most Xbox 360 games are $60 (haha 360, I get it) really kind of pisses me off. I have fairly low standards when it comes to JRPGs but that is a nice amount of money.

I will write about my block-dropping, uppercutting, zombie head ripping offing adventures here tomorrow (this is mostly to remind myself).
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Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

Nana's Adventures in Xbox Land

Note: A lot of this sounds negative though overall my experiences have been mixed or, dare I say, good. The negative points seem to take precedence so please continue supporting me until the end.

Part 1: Good God

So I bought this Xbox 360 last week Friday and it has been sitting on my floor. I was busy all day Saturday, and on Sunday I bought the Wii, so I hadn't opened it or anything. I thought about it for a while and ended up deciding to keep it, and on a recommendation from ShaperMC I bought Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis for $20. I get home from work on Wednesday and decide to open it up.

I am shocked when I reach into the box and pull out the power brick. Now I'd heard this thing was huge though I never thought it would be THAT huge.

You see that? It's almost as big as the entire Wii system! I needed a lumbar harness to carry it over to my TV without throwing my back out.

Part 2: Anything worth doing is worth doing over and over again

The Xbox is clearly a Microsoft product. Now I think they're making great strides towards no longer being huge evil corporation with things like the 360 and the Zune, but once I opened the box I could instantly tell that Microsoft was responsible for the contents of this package. Between the instruction manual, the "quick setup" card that doesn't really say anything, and the warranty book that's as thick as the instruction manual, it's pretty much like every other Microsoft product I own.

Once I turned on the system, it asks me if I want to create a profile or import an existing one. I do have an old Xbox but I've never used Live before so I fill out all the info. This takes years since I keep making mistakes with the analog stick and then hitting the Red button thinking it's backspace, only to realize it's cancel and I've lost any text I just entered. I pick a gamertag, and enter my info, and the system downloads some updates.

I reach the menu (or the 'blades' as I have heard them called) and while I'd heard this was some kind of revolutionary new menu system that's being integrated all over Vista, I'm not really impressed. It's neat, but I don't see what's so great about it. Anyway, I slide over to the Xbox Live blade to get online and download some Live Arcade games.

As I didn't have a live account before, I have to enter a metric fuckton of information. My MSN username (connected to a hotmail account that's inactive!) and password, my home address, my phone number, three personal references and a notarized approval from my bank. This takes even longer than creating the gamertag since I keep cancelling out on accident and having to re-enter each field. Then they make me pick a picture again (only now there are other options that I can buy!) and finally I get to the Live menu.

I poke around a few of the options, and start to download the Dead Rising demo and a few others which goes all right. I notice something odd, that my 20GB hard drive is only listed as having 8.9 GB free (even though the system was new) but I forget about it for now.

Next I decide to buy some Microsoft Points so I can start downloading Live Arcade games. This goes okay until I have to enter my credit card info. Now I enter the number, expiration date and security code just fine, but when they ask me for the billing address without giving me the option of using the one I just typed in 5 minutes ago I'm pretty pissed.

I keep repeating "I'm doing this for lumines" to myself so I re-enter all of my address info again and eventually am rewarded 5000 Microsoft Points for completing the quest (is that how they came up with the name?).

So I head over to the Live Arcade menu and select the full Lumines download. It takes my Microsoft Points, starts to download and then an error comes up. "You cannot have any more active downloads, please remove one of your other active downloads to start this one" or something like that. I guess the Xbox 360, with its triple-core Xenon PowerPC processor and 512 MiB of RAM it can't queue more than five downloads at a time.

(more later)
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Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

Man, those 'blades' comprise the most ugly and unintuitive menu system I've ever seen. Everything's so fragmented. It really helps you appreciate how great the Wii menu is.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Yeah, well, the blades use to be worse about 4 or 5 months ago before they made them more … uhh, whats the word? Straight forward? Yeah, you couldn’t really tell where certain things were and you had to go out of your way to do things that it seemed like you should be able to do from certain blades. Once you learn them they work well, but there shouldn’t be this kind of learning curve just to navigate a console. I have a friend at work pulled the trigger to get a 360 and I downloaded a bunch of stuff for him (he let me borrow his hard drive so I could do it). I told him I put a bunch of stuff on it and that he could now watch a few videos, play some demos and some live arcade demos. I asked him a week or so later if he tried any of them and he said that I must have screwed up because there wasn’t anything there. I found out he just didn’t know where the hell to find them. I can only imagine that there are a ton of people in similar circumstances.

About my Table Tennis recommendation: it’s a good game for a budget price which you will probably play about as much and as long as you would play a VS fighting game of about the same size. So if you bought VF4 and hardly played it alone, you probably won’t get too much out of the game, but if your someone who can spend some time learning the nuances of the system and unlocking characters and uniforms on your own, then you’ll get more distance out of it. It plays more like a VS fighting game than I expected it to as well.

I know you asked the other day about Live Arcade games and I didn’t give you a good answer as much I was yelling at Shadow Dragons and Yaks, so I’ll do a little run down here:

Assault Heroes: So far I’ve only played the demo, but I liked what I played. It reminds me of MERCS, Ikari Warriors, and Guerilla War. When I get done with this issue I’m going to buy it!

DOOM: You like the original doom? You want to play it again, but in HD with surround sound (which is better than it sounds)? Yeah, get this game.

Geometry Wars: This is pretty much the only game I return back to constantly. I play it when killing time quite frequently. I don’t like that I’m not very precise at the game though. Anyways, really excellent shooter.

Mutant Storm Reloaded: It’s … ok. Play the demo. If you like the geometry-wars-esque mechanics you may like it. I didn’t like it enough to play more than the demo.

Small Arms: Super Smash Bros meets Contra. It’s very good, I wish that I knew enough people on live that would want to play it at the same time. It’s not the best game ever made, but damn if it’s not fun. It’s also really good with real-life-multiplayer.

Arcade Ports:

Namco: (Galaga, PacMan, Ms. Pacman, Dig Dug, Rally X) These are all really excellent ports. Esp after Namco figured out a few things and streamlined the menus and alerts.

Konami: (Contra, Time Pilot, Scramble, Frogger): These are all done by Digital Eclipse, and pretty much total shit. I mean, I guess they play alright, but I’m not buying them because I refuse to support such horrible ports of these games.

Midway: (UMK3, Robotron, Joust, Smash TV, Gauntlet) These ports are all decent enough. They don’t look as bad as the Digital Eclipse games, but I just don’t like the way they redid some of the games’ sprites (gauntlet sticks out in my mind). Robotron works really well, but damn that game is hard. All the menus for these games suck.

Games to not get:

Cloning Clyde: God, I don’t think they could have made a worse platforming game as the first “new” platforming game on Live Arcade.

Roboblitz: Over compicated and over priced, as well as boring, this game ranks in as an very neat little physics engine, but pretty poor in general.

Konami Arcade Games: See above.

Stuff to look out for in the future:

Castlevania SotN
Castle Crashers
Alien Hominid
Space Giraffe
Double Dragon (if Tatio can do a good port)
Tempest (if Atari can do a good port)

As a final word of sorts, always download the demos for everything no matter how sure you are you want the game. The demos are free and certain games have proven that you can mess up a sure thing. I don't even fully trust the SotN port not to be totally borked because Digital Eclipse is handling the port. Konami really needs to fucking fire those guys.
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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 · Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 11:29 am Post subject:

Ok a few things that probably could have helped Nana out and might help someone else out in the future.

1. If you just get an MS Passport and an Xbox.com account set up online ahead of time it's so much easier. You just log into stuff you've already set up on your computer and go. Actually, if you think there's a tiny chance you might get a 360 any time from now until 2020 you should go ahead and set up an Xbox.com account to reserve your Live username.

2. Or you can just plug a USB Keyboard into the 360 and type your info in.

3.

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

I finally stopped playing Elite Beat Agents over and over and over again, much to the delight of everyone around me who had been treated to badly-hummed renditions of Material Girl.

Part of the reason is because I have been playing Rhythm Tengoku. I have perfects on all the stages except for one (the preposterously unforgiving second karaoke/girls-clapping stage). I like to think of the game as a series of music visualizers, except that they are entirely dependent on me. Something about controlling the beat really latches onto my brain, and I find myself playing for a couple hours at a time. The remixes are the best part of the main game, excellent little culminations to this meditation on the link between visual, audio, and player.

The other game I have been working my way through is Katamari Damacy. I have played it a few times before, but always with company, and never the whole way through. I can say with certainty that the end credits equal those in Meteos. (My best so far is 189 countries, including Antarctica. I still have not been able to roll up Russia.) I can also say that this game, in its crude, eccentric manner, is the very definition of elegance in game design. My favorite thing to roll up is sidewalk graffiti.

So Hotel Dusk should arrive at my door any day now. I can't wait! Has anyone her played it yet?
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

SuperWes · Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 11:39 am Post subject: