Sno

The changes to the medic were probably the thing that irked me the most, heh. Really, and seeing all those ways they changed the game, and then having 2fort kind of crammed in there despite the fact it played terribly under TF2's ruleset. To me, it seemed like it was kind of masquarading around as a game i didn't think it felt anything like. I mean, and i wasn't under the illusion that TF/TFC were perfect either, those games are kind of unplayable with how much people now know how to exploit them. (I liked grenade jumping as part of the game, but the extents to which it could be abused got absolutely ridiculous.) I think, for me at least, TF2 was in a weird space. It wasn't enough like the original games to appeal to me, but it wasn't enough its own thing to not draw comparisons. (Although, i guess it has gradually become more its own thing, though the things it's taken on make me even less interested in it. Grindy unlocks in competitive multiplayer are gross.) Anyways, yeah, fuck TF2. Boo hiss! Dissent! Contrarianism!

Can i be the disgruntled hater? I played a ton of TF for Quake and TFC for Half-Life, i even used to run a TFC server, and when i played TF2 as released with the Orange Box, I immediately decided that i hated it and never wanted to play it again. (And i didn't!) Do love that art style though.

My general opinion on Revelations remains unchanged from when i first played it, in that i don't think RE:Rev is nearly as good as RE4 was, but i do think it's an actual better game than RE5. (To be clear, i think RE4 is one of the best games i've ever played, i was ambivalent towards RE as a series until that game.) I mean, and even though Capcom's position seems to be that it's "only" a side-game, i do think it's big and ambitious enough that it deserves to be counted among the main series. The story is a total throwaway that doesn't tie into anything, but as a design, it is in every way true to the latter-day Resident Evil formula. (More RE4's frantic chaos than RE5's bro-heroism, but in more cramped quarters than either, which can be both a negative or a positive depending on your point of view.) I also agree that Revelations is an astounding technical feat. As has been the case for the more powerful Nintendo systems, we probably won't actually end up seeing a lot of games that push this hardware as hard as Revelations obviously does, but it pretty clearly illustrates that there isn't as much of a gulf between the 3DS and the Vita as there was between the DS and the PSP. (In fact, it seems like the 3DS/Vita cross-platform release is going to be a thing, looking at a few upcoming games.) Anyways, i strongly endorse spending some time messing around with Revelation's raid-mode, that actually ended up being my favorite thing about the game. The online co-op is really well executed, and there's a good loot hook. (Though i suspect anybody still playing has crazy maxed out builds and might not be very fun to play with, in which case, it still works fine solo, but you miss out on some fun bonus missions that randomly pop up after playing co-op.)

Park Patrol is definitely worth playing, i think. It's a very different game, but it's certainly not a bad game.

So, was this game always progressive scan, or is that some backwards compatibility sorcery happening because of the Wii? The case doesn't list it as being a progressive scan game. Either way, it looks nice. You know, and the game was definitely not lauded for its visuals when it came out, but i think the simple art style is kind of elegant and has aged better than a lot of other Gamecube games. Really stellar sound too, i think. The musical notes that accompany all of Chibi's actions, , and even the jibberish out of the NPC's that manages to convey a ton of personality for each character.The camera is terrible, it's just bad. It's a bad camera. It would be a really big problem if the game wasn't generally so leisurely about its difficulty and pace. I'm really dumb, because all i was doing wrong was standing in the wrong spot and getting a "you can't throw in trash from here" prompt, and i think i made this same dumb mistake the first time i played the game. Anyways, I'm at a point in this game where it's just opened up wide, and i had forgotten how the game was like this, you just get to a point where if you're not entirely sure what to do to progress a certain quest line, it doesn't matter, because there's probably seven other things going at the same time. The game is really good about having all these concurrent events play off of eachother and feel organic without anything forestalling your ability to progress through something else or outright cancelling a quest path. (As far as i am aware, there are no missables.) It really kind of does feel like a living household full of crazy people, with so many things constantly things going on. However, in this context it really bothers me when i notice things like the TV's not being plugged into outlets, or this home not having a bathroom. I am unreasonably troubled by the lapses of verisimilitude in this comic book household. I've also spent a few minutes messing around in Park Patrol, the second game. I don't think i ever finished that game, and it looks like i still had things in progress on my save file, but i must have been pretty far into it because i had a pretty fully developed park and what looks like all of the items and upgrades unlocked. That is a really pretty cool little game, but it has a very different emphasis, there's no vertical exploration of space, it doesn't really take advantage of the scale like the first game did. It also has a much, much smaller emphasis on questing and NPC interactions. You're managing a park, building up a park, trying to fill it with flowers and interesting terrain, and that's about it. I mean, you're mostly just trying to keep flowers from dying, as i remember it. (While ripping around in awesome little RC cars.) I also did a bit of reading on the third game, the one we didn't get, and i was kind of bummed out. It looks , DS ugliness aside. It also features Jenny all grown up!... living in poverty as a single mother...

Dialogue in this game scrolls soooooo slooooooooowly... and everything is said in the most verbose manner possible. I love these characters though, Telly is awesome, and it's a good well-written localization. (I've been noticing that there's some points where the yes/no prompts correlate to the questions asked in a really confusing and unclear way.) It was something that i remembered being further into the game than it apparently actually is, since it only took a few hours to get in that far. I wasn't even rushing to get there, i kind of vaguely remembered the progression of events, and was going out of my way to explore all the corners available to me. The game is more open-ended than i remember, i was surprised that i was able to get outside so early on. Also, playing around a bit with save reloads showed that there are tons of optional or alternative events sprinkled around that pop up to point you back in the right directions, it really feels like a lot of thought and work must have gone into everything. It's also clicked with me that the whole costumes thing is very similar to how Zelda games have used masks as a way to let Link talk about different topics with NPC's. I mean, and pushing up against ledges to jump, or getting the expanded item description the first time you pick an item up regardless of how small or important it is, or the bigger things like the ways in which it handles progress gating and its day/night cycle. A lot of small touches common to most Nintendo games, a recognizable house style, but in my estimation, particularly common to Zelda games. I also still really like the whole economy of movement thing. There's always a bit of a push and pull between that and the day/night cycle, trying to figure out how quickly you can move without making costly navigational errors, it feels a lot like Pikmin in this way. (Though it helps to buy the 15 minute timer early in the game and take your time with things, and it especially pays to do so when climbing around in areas with precarious footing. You can also always go back to the shorter cycles if you want, since there are points with NPC routines that play out over multiple days.) I had also forgotten that it takes an annoying long time before you can get up high enough to use the waste basket. My head is too full of junk! Telly keeps leaving spent party poppers all over the place, and i can't pick up any more of them! Cleanliness! Cleanliness! Argh!

I did a search for Chibi-Robo and came up with this thread from six years ago. So i am performing thread-necromancy on it to talk about starting a new playthrough of Chibi Robo, i hope i am not yelled at for this action. When i loaded up my original save, it became clear that i had just bolted through the main story, so i'm thinking about trying to do a more completist playthrough. I don't recall though, was there anything in the way of missables? Given that it's structured recognizably like other Nintendo games, i'm guessing there probably isn't.

The escort quests can be a real pain, the ones you have access to early in the game will take you far off into areas you may not be equipped to deal with. (The destination will be clearly marked on your map when you have that escort quest set to active, they're usually far off in unexplored territory.) I've heard it both said that NPC's have perma-death, or will respawn after a week's worth of game time. Either way, losing your escortee in a battle can deprive you of potentially important NPC's. Generally, take every quest you come across, but hold off on notice board escort quests until you're ready to deal with them. As for the other thing... Also, if you have a completist mindset, be careful about points of no return. There's only a few, and they're telegraphed pretty clearly.

I tried to get into Eve a while back and really dug it, but ultimately decided that i would have to go way too far down the rabbit hole to get the most out of it. I do love the idea of that game, and i am always thrilled hearing tales of the political machinations going on in nullsec, it's completely fascinating. Take this recent Kotaku article, a kind of blah tale about a game exploit, where i then noticed this gem hiding in the comments section: And then right at the end there you're reminded that, oh shit, he's talking about a game.

Almost without fail, the first year or two for any new console will be incredibly slow. It takes time to build up momentum, getting publishers, developers, and the public to have enough faith in the system to where things can snowball. Basically every game system of the last decade has gone through this pattern in varying degrees. Relatively speaking, the 3DS is in actually a very good place right now and has a pretty promising future. It has just recently hit its stride in the last few months, there are some genuinely really great games available, and there is a ton of potentially interesting software on the way.

So, speaking as somebody who is a fairly casual observer of the series, I have honestly always kind of dreaded the MGS games as... you know... games... I mean, the part where you play them, i think they're kind of awful. Somebody else is going to have to help you on that one, i have never played any of those games for their gameplay. (Having only played a few of them, admittedly.) I kind of love them as insane narratives though, the way those games just revel in overwrought melodrama and ludicrous plot-twists, nevermind the hard swings into outright absurdism. All at once, it's completely self-serious, knowing, and proactive about how convoluted and dumb it is. Kojima, as a story teller, either doesn't know when to stop or knows exactly how far off the cliff he has to go. Rather than a failing, i think that's the actual appeal of that series, and it's probably something you're into and get, or aren't and don't.

If we want to talk about upcoming 3DS games, the two i'm most excited about are and . (That latter one obviously has different titles in different markets, but it's the sequel to 999.)Square's upcoming 3DS RPG, the amusingly titled "Bravely Default: Flying Fairy", also

Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, Resident Evil: Revelations, and Kid Icarus: Uprising are the games i would say you cannot go wrong with. (MK7 has a patch on the 3DS shop, so don't forget to grab that.) Uprising is hot stuff, i think it's the best game on the system. (Miffy is correct, if you've ever played Metroid Prime: Hunters and were comfortable with that, you know what the deal is with Uprising.) The CPP lets you have lefty control in Uprising, but only Revelations really needs the CPP. (MGS3D uses it too.) ^ Revelations and MGS3D both have demos on the shop, so hold off on those maybe, check out the demos first. (There's quite a growing library of demos on the shop.) There's tons of cool 3DS/DSi-ware stuff on the shop. I strongly recommend Mighty Switch Force. All of Wayforward's Nintendo Shop stuff is an easy recommendation, actually. Really though, pointing out cool stuff on the Nintendo shop would be a thread in and of itself. (There is, in fact, already a thread for it.) Also, it might just be because i am already particularly fond of these two series, but i really like and would recommend Ridge Racer 3D and Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy. (Which has nothing to do with the 360/PS3 game, it's actually a remake of AC2.) Oh, and Tales of the Abyss is a really nice and improved port of Abyss, so if you're into the Tales games and haven't already played that, that's another pretty easy recommendation. Ocarina 3D is also worth mentioning, it's a very nicely done remake, but has some potentially detrimental issues. (Though every time i mention that, somebody yells at me and tells me that they didn't run into any problems.) Some other games may be worth looking at too, the Starfox 64 remake is allegedly very slick excepting some odd additions concerning control options, and Tetris Axis is apparently quite awesome. (Nintendo continues to be the only publisher that treats Tetris properly.)

The Circle Pad Pro, the add-on stick.

My belief is that the DSi XL was made, essentially, for old people. I have a mother that expressed interest in Brain Age and the like, but couldn't make out the text on the smaller DS screens. Bought her a DSi XL and a few puzzle games, and i think she probably plays it every day. However, the 3DS doesn't have that broadly appealing library of games yet, most of it has been very hardcore-minded, so i don't know who is going to buy the 3DS XL. (Aside from people who mistake it for the DSi XL.) That all said, I think the 3DS screens definitely needed to be bigger, and there is a significantly higher pixel density than what was going on with the DS screens, so i don't think those images will look dramatically worse blown up. As such, I wouldn't mind seeing what a game like RE:Revelations looks like on the 3DS XL. The problem is that portability is a big part of how i use my 3DS, so that puts me out of the market for a 3DS XL. It's very strange though, i don't know what to make of it, really. A lot is very strange about this product refresh. I think you're right that it may be indicative of disorder within Nintendo.

So many people have been talking about how crazy the ending is that i ended up having it spoiled for me before starting. Playing through the game with the knowledge of what is coming, there are some small hints of it here and there, but it definitely doesn't really set it up in any overt way. It's kind of a shame that the game is content to be so utterly bland for the majority of its duration, and then swerve off a cliff only right at the end, even though that probably makes it a pretty great twist. (If you're not expecting a twist.) Anyways, i have things to say about this game! Figuring out how this game works has been really interesting, it's such an interesting game. First off, Dogma has such a goddamned great combat system. There's a lot of small things they get right, like combos. Stuff like being able to cut a light string short and cancel directly into other moves. (Heavy attacks or specials.) I finally also realized that hitting jump while grappling to an enemy launches you straight up such that you can hit grab and lock back down at a higher point on the enemy. Also realized that certain special moves can be triggered while hanging onto larger enemies. (The scarlet kisses ability for daggers is one, activate it and then keep hammering that button for the ability's no-cost follow-up attacks and the whole colossus climb thing becomes a way more powerful tool.) So i've just been rapidly scaling and crippling individual limbs on the giant enemies and it is incredible. Observations about the AI: I still think it's really pretty incredible, but it's hard not to notice the path-finding struggling to keep up with you as you run around exploring, though the game is very on top of teleporting them back to you if they fall behind. Anyways, it does give you some forms of more nuanced control over your pawn, albeit in very roundabout ways. The pawn inclinations are the basic tactics that your pawn prioritizes, with its top two gaining particular dominance. (When told to sit down at an Inn's knowledge chair, your pawn will occasionally ask whether to prioritize its secondary or tertiary inclination, though it's primary inclination will always remain as so.) You can also spend the game's rarer currency on potions to directly modify your pawn's inclinations, but it seems like those might be temporary? (I haven't messed around with those much because i've been happy with my pawn's priorities.) The pawn's inclinations are also supposed to naturally adjust in increments based on how you play and order them around. (Repeated use of the "help" command will apparently nudge them towards the guardian inclination, causing them to prioritize protecting the player.) I mean... So my pawn is an acquisitor/medicant, so it obsessively item-hunts and prioritizes healing and buffs. Alleviates my ocd and makes for a good mage. (Some of the other inclinations will make them focus on ranged enemies, or prioritize protecting other pwans, etc.) So you've matched up your pawn's personality to an appropriate vocation, but it's still struggling in a fight. What comes in there is the pawn's familiarity with a given type of enemy. The pawns always start out kind of dumb, making a lot of annoying mistakes, only gradually finding use of better tactics, and casting the right buffs, etc. (I suspect that the pawn's familiarity with immediate terrain also impact its ability to fight.) I don't really like this part of the game, since it's artificially making the pawns dumber than they need to be. When you run into a new type of powerful enemy later in the game, you can really feel this in play, the pawns just suddenly start stumbling over themselves like idiots. It can be really frustrating when you sort out right away exactly what needs to be done, but your pawn seems to be like five steps behind you and is going to have to grind out that combat experience to catch on. There are also some pretty legitimate problems with the AI. Mages and Sorcerers will almost always go for the maximum spell charge, which can be incredibly frustrating in a situation where a more quickly cast spell is what they need to be doing. Generally though, it all works out exceedingly well and is often very impressive. Unrelated to any of the above, i've also been hearing that the the NPC affinity system can pretty much break the game in certain circumstances, so be careful about wooing shop/service NPC's. (Simply as a result of playing normally, I have the vocation dude in Gran Soren blushing at me every time i talk to him, and he, specifically, is the one you absolutely don't want in that situation.)

http://www.joystiq.c...-19-for-199-99/ So new model of the 3DS, but it's nothing exciting, it's basically just a reprise on the DSi XL concept. 1 - The 3DS's screens probably look much nicer scaled up than the DS's screens did. 2 - It has a matte finish instead of gloss. (Does gloss bother anybody else as much as it bothers me? The 3DS is a magnet for grime.) 3 - It is definitely no longer something you can fit in a pocket. (Thing is enormous!) 4 - It has an ever so slightly better battery, Nintendo is talking like six hours as opposed to five. 5 - The shell was redesigned to be aesthetically similar to the Wii U tablet, and it's really quite ugly. 6 - 200 bucks, as opposed to 170 for the 3DS proper. 7 - Interestingly, no built-in CPP, and the existing peripheral obviously won't fit on this thing. 8 - The Japanese details for this thing revealed that, at least in Japan, it would not ship with its own charger! (Either you have a 3DS charger to use with it, or buy one separately.) So, eh. I'm quite glad it isn't anything i feel compelled to own.

I generally hate character unlocks in games for precisely this reason, there shouldn't be a fifty hour grind between taking a game out of its case and enjoying it with friends. I played both of those on the GC too. Sands of Time was pretty solid on the GC, had some audio compression, but was much prettier than the PS2 version. BG&E had some issues though, songs cut short and looping hard, while the save file was monstrously huge. However, I think it's generally pretty hard to argue for the GC as being a good source of cross platform games when it was the X-box that usually got the best versions, and the PS2 that got the most stuff. Soul Calibur 2 had a great GC version though. (Even though Link was actually the worst character in the game. Fun to play as, but useless in a serious fight.) I played Alien Hominid on the GC. Anybody remember Metal Arms? There was also that weirdly great Spider Man 2 tie-in game for the movie, i played that on the GC too. Then things that have already been mentioned, and things that aren't really worth mentioning. I don't know what you're talking about, this looks great! (Maybe mildly nsfw?) Don't you want to play this fine Super Monkey Ball DLC that Sega actually released? Heh.

So that's the one where you gut Pikachu and wear him as a hat?

This topic inspired me to dig out my old saves and plug some of those tiny Gamecube discs into the glowing blue maw of the Wii and spend a couple hours drowning in random Gamecube nostalgia. I think the result is that i might end up starting a new playthrough on Chibi-Robo, i don't know. I had forgotten just how intoxicatingly whimsical that game is. The musical accents to every action you take, toys wandering the halls of that house at night, using costumes to illustrate different messages to NPC's and start different conversations. Man, and the sense of exploration and discovery, finding ways to navigate those hugely vertical spaces. God damn, i love that game.

Absolutely, yes. I don't think there's anything wrong with knowing what you like and wanting more of it. It is just utterly depressing when people also demand new experiences and then aren't willing to support those new experiences with their dollars. (I think the honest truth is that most gamers don't know what they want, and so stick to the known quantities.) You know, but the biggest thing that has changed since the Gamecube is digital distribution, and that's probably been a huge step in the right direction. Services like Steam providing a venue for creative and risky games to be developed on the cheap and sold at a lower price point, a lower bar of entry. (Though then there's the argument about the devaluing of games, and the fact that now, even there in that price-reduced market, people will only spend money on what they know.) It's also all arguably made the retail space a lot less quirky and interesting.

So apparently this came out on the 18th? The buzz is that it's awesome, it's getting great scores everywhere. Just a straight-up FFT/Tactics Ogre-style strategy-RPG, from what i gather. Jesus, Nintendo. They quietly announced that it was coming to North America during E3, and a week later it's dumped into retail with absolutely no fanfare. Pokemon Conquest is the localized title.

As somebody who really loved the Gamecube at the time and was closely following it, i still don't really understand why so many of the fresh and interesting games Nintendo was making for that system were being met with such apathy. Maybe the most cynical way to look at it is that, for all that people complain about Nintendo not doing enough new things with their franchises, all they actually want is the same game over and over. (Considering the way games like Call of Duty are consistently met with open arms, i think there's truth to this argument.) Reggie Fils-Aime has regularly argued during E3 press conferences this point that Nintendo fans want something old to feel like something new. Every year he makes the same argument on stage, like a half-hearted defense against the sequelitis detractors, made in an increasingly terse manner as the years go on. (I like to imagine that Reggie drinks hard around E3.) The Gamecube was all about new things, and people weren't interested. Pikmin was amazing and influential and not a big seller. (I mean, the games that did do well on that system were sequels. Sequels reinventing their franchises, but still sequels.)

The rigid rules surrounding the Knights of the Nine add-on don't mesh very well with the rest of the game, prevented me from ever finishing it. Is it worth going back and giving it another go?

Dual Strike had a lot of neat stuff, and it was a lot of fun, but it was also a completely, completely broken game. Absolutely awfully balanced. Days of Ruin, over-powered anti-tank units aside, was generally a much more balanced game. (Which is nice, because it was also the first game in the series with any form of online play.) It really also had a lot of neat new mechanics, actually. Kind of a soft reboot for the Wars series. Man, but there was a lot of cool stuff in there. Loved the aircraft carriers and some of the other new units. Really want to see a Wars game on the 3DS. (Dreaming here: With some kind of asynchronous play-by-mail option.)