Sno

I was talking to a buddy about an encounter i had when the sun set after exploring for while, just found myself set upon by like a dozen lizard monsters and a chimera in pitch black in the middle of a forest. I thought it was an incredible battle, and the whole encounter felt really unexpected and organic, but my buddy was "I know exactly where you are" and started talking to me about the quests and locations in that area. With the highly restricted fast-travel mechanics in the game and the extremely quick respawn timers on enemies, i can see how the world of Dragon's Dogma being a largely set-in-stone construct could become grating, but i'm not there yet. Anyways, so it's not a super dynamic game, but then it's like Dark Souls; what changes is you and how you approach the tasks you face. Dragon's Dogma gives you a pretty big toolbox to play with. I don't think that people will necessarily all have the same stories out of this game. I also feel like the Elder Scrolls comparisons are a huge disservice to the game, because outside of the world being very big, they have literally almost nothing in common. Also, have you guys found the forger in Gran Soren? You can make forgeries of quest items that you want to keep, giving the fake to the quest giver so you can resolve the quest, but the results will vary. Quests might immediately fail, follow up quests might change dramatically, or you might get away scot-free with an awesome item.

One of my favorite rumors that I've heard for the next X-box is that it's going to use proprietary game cartridges. Which would have horrible implications for backwards compatibility, but would still be awesome. If that one comes to pass, it'll probably be tiny game cards or something, but i want to see big fat NES carts.

That J-rock theme has been stuck in my head just constantly over the last few days, it's kind of great. I've been playing around with the mage vocation and have been having a lot of fun with that. (It seems like the AI tries to avoid redundancy? I had another mage in my party, and if i started doing buffs and healing, they started doing offensive magic. If i started doing offensive magic, they switched back to doing buffs and healing.) Man, and once you have more advanced spells as a mage and can charge them up multiple levels, and while holding onto the charged spell, you can paint multiple targets and just carpet bomb a whole group of enemies or then click the right stick in to focus your shots back in on one enemy. (You can even paint multiple limbs on the epic enemies.) Mages are fun. Archers are the bane of your existence.

Crap, Raff beat me to posting, hit all the ones i was going to add. Though I'd also add F-Zero GX, the just balls-crushingly hard pinnacle of the F-Zero series. (Please Nintendo? I would like another one of these, it's been nine years.) There is a strong case to make for the Gamecube being one of Nintendo's most creatively wild periods. So many new games, so many weird games, and so many existing franchises spun in strange new directions. I think that the Gamecube created more personal Nintendo favorites for me than any other system they've put out, Nintendo's GC run was awesome and tragically maligned as "kiddy" stuff. I see Lobotomy's avatar and i am reminded how much i absolutely adored Chibi-Robo, that deserved much more love than it got, we didn't even get the third game in North America. You know, and Eternal Darkness seems doomed to perennially be one of the most unfortunately overlooked survival horror games ever made, an extremely intelligent and adult game on a system that definitely wasn't the right market for it. I mean, and all of this is just talking about Nintendo, there were a lot of other really great games that at least started out exclusively on that system. The Gamecube is where i first played Ikaruga, and that is a game i still absolutely treasure. (I made a pun!) Tales of Symphonia was a pretty great game. Then there was Capcom's pretty legendary push for the system that resulted in a lot of greats like Killer 7, Viewtiful Joe, and Resident Evil 4. Also, for the few times that i actually got all the pieces together to actually play it, i still really adore Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. (Arguing over who carries the bucket is magical.) The Gamecube was awesome.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/13/pikmin-3-lacking-online-multiplayer-because-there-are-a-bunc/ Fuck, goddammit Nintendo, seriously? You just had to screw this up, didn't you? Somebody needs to show those guys Starcraft 2 or something, it'll blow their minds.

I think 2d sprite games look absolutely beautiful with the 3DS's autostereoscopic 3D. It's a really crisp, novel visual to see. See Mutant Mudds or Mighty Switch Force on the 3DS shop for good examples of it. (Mutant Mudds has a demo.) So if Nintendo did something like that, that might be something really cool. But if they all-the-way remade LTTP, they'd probably redo it as a polygonal game, and i would be way less interested. Either way, Majora's Mask is more in need of a another chance to shine. Just as one of the single most bold and interesting games in that entire series, and something that has been erroneously maligned in retrospect, it needs more love.

I took it as the five main bosses all representing a style or era of music, with the viking dude being metal. I think we might have differing opinions on No More Heroes, but with regards to Lollipop, I don't think we have much of a disagreement. I'm saying that Lollipop is kind of banging on all the Suda trademarks without finding the lunatic narrative energy of some of his earlier games. I mean, but all those video game flourishes were absolutely not out of place in No More Heroes, it was narratively contextualized there. Travis was a video game nerd living out the plot of a video game, it was the main point of the entire game.

If you're into what Space Marine showed of WH40k as a universe, i encourage wiki-binging. It's a fun setting, everything is horrible.

So I think you've got it. Early in the game, I thought I was reading some subtext into some things, like it was going to end up being a skewering of high-school cliques or something, but it didn't really go anywhere with that. I still think that element is kind of there, but there's no big mind fuck, and there's no big subversion of your expectations. I mean, but all the little stylistic touchstones are there. It has the Suda style without feeling like a Suda story, and that's maybe the James Gunn influence there. That kind of plays into what i said about this being a better Grasshopper game than a Suda game. (Narratively, it's more like the collaboratively-designed Shadows of the Damned than No More Heroes.) It really is very sharply written though, the game has some genuine laughs and i don't think the game is nearly as pandering and gross as WB's marketing would have you believe, if that's your concern. (They had a weird game to sell, so they sold it with sex.)

So the towns are huge and populous and obviously a lot of work went into them, but they are also, as a matter of aesthetics, boring and bland and lifeless feeling. The lighting is so uniform, and feature just such cruddy, indistinct architecture; the cities are ugly and uninteresting to look at, it's really bothering me. It's not just the brown medieval town thing, it's like it lacks an identity. The huge areas around the towns are quite amazing though, been getting a bit of an SOTC vibe wandering those landscapes. (If SOTC had bandits and goblins aggroing on you every ten feet.) There's a weird two-slot save scheme that doesn't doesn't quite give you any insight or control for how it works. That's kind of fucked up. I think I've seen that "BUY OUR DLC" tutorial message pop up on my screen every hour or so. Trading any significant number of items between party members probably takes more time than it should. (Also, and this maybe isn't a realistic expectation, but being able to define weapon/armor sets would have been just super. It's that you're constantly swapping out gear when changing vocations, you end up having a lot of pieces to track.) On the other hand, that shop crafting can "see" my Inn storage is very appreciated. I love the combat in this game, that is the reason to play this, it's really superbly well executed stuff. (Really needs item hot keys though.) The pawn trading thing is very interesting, seeing pawns of other players just wandering around roads and towns waiting to be recruited, all that stuff. (The people of this world don't seem particularly bothered by all of these immortal, interdimensional, vagabond homonculi roaming their streets.) I don't get all the social stuff Capcom has tied into the Pawn trading though. I don't think that needs to be there, that's probably a little misguided for the kind of game this is. Anyways, Pawns are awesome. After my disappointing experience with the demo, i am surprised, they're actually really very smart. Admittedly, i'm not more than ten hours into the game, but i have yet to see the AI stumble. I've read some things about the AI in the game, but i can't really speak to what the nuts and bolts of it actually are. I can only say that i have seen my main pawn, whose class has not been changed, adapt radically different tactics as i played around with different vocations. I mean, and the way the pawns act with initiative, setting up scenarios for you that play to your strengths. It's super fucking cool. It's super fucking cool because it works. The second i feel like it isn't working, i'm going to be back to bitching about how little control this game allows me to have over their actions.

Have some distance when beginning strings, the first couple attacks usually leave you pretty vulnerable and are better just for closing distance while you build up to the later attacks in a string. (The game introduces the concept of homing attacks without any explanation, but i believe it's the game's nomenclature for the first few attacks out of each string? Possibly?) Also, don't just mash one attack, use your combos. Combos are always stronger than button mashing. For larger enemies, stay behind them and out of their attack radius. (The bunny hop move, when the dodge is modified by your proximity to an enemy, is the simplest way to get behind a larger enemy, and it also combos into some of the strongest attacks. Some later enemies will deflect the bunny hop though.) Use your high-low chainsaw attacks appropriately. Daze zombies with the pompoms, wound zombies with the chainsaw. Kite wounded zombies into groups of dazed zombies, then use appropriate wide-angle moves to get your triple/quad/etc kills for platinum medals. Turn off the auto-aim for the blaster, it's horrible. (Additionally, while holding down the left trigger, X reloads and A is a quick turn.) Also, the game lets you carry a ton of "nick tickets" and health items, way more than you should ever need to use. As for insta-death, i unno. Which part, specifically, was giving you trouble?

I love games that actually try to make visibility a thing that you have to deal with, but it always seems like a risky thing for developers to do, because so many players react angrily to having their vision restricted. (Or people fiddle with gamma settings to outright cheat it.) Anyways, i finally got myself a copy of this. I'm really into it, thus far. Had a laugh at the j-rock main theme.

Well that and, also, they've already actually remade LTTP. On the GBA. That's where Four Swords came from.

I feel like it's a better Grasshopper game than a Suda game. If that makes sense.

So i burned through this really quickly, it's not particularly long. I really enjoyed it, i think it's an excellent game, probably a new high water mark for Grasshopper There's threads of the No More Heroes design DNA in there, but it's a much less awkward game, feels maybe more like other contemporary 3d action games. It definitely still looks like a Suda game, that stylistically interesting and kind of aesthetically crummy cell-shaded visual. I thought it was pretty funny and well-written, and i am sure some people will be terribly offended by it. I think it's probably too easy on normal, and i thought the boss fights were disappointingly straightforward. (I think i need to play some more on hard and see how that goes.) I don't recall if the game ever tries to illustrate that its mechanics are designed around the player trying to kite zombies into groups, daze/injure them, and set them up for simultaneous kills. (Which is one of the only ways to earn the rarer type of medal.) It's the kind of game that somebody could just button mash and brute force through and probably have a terrible time, but that's true for most examples of the genre. I've seen some reviews complain that there's no in-mission saving, but there is. It saves at regular checkpoints, but to load your checkpoints, you have to back all the way out to the main menu and say yes to the quick load prompt when starting up the game again. (Japanese UI at its finest. Speaking of which, there's also no way to answer phone calls that aren't automatically picked up, you have to go all the way into the collectibles sub menu and listen to them there.) Anyways. I very much enjoyed it, this is a thing i would recommend. (You know, to the right people.)

Man, i can't really get into the discussion because i don't have that game fresh in memory, but i really liked War for Cybertron. I mean, I also hold a great deal of affection for that brand, so take that as you will, but i thought that was a genuinely awesome game. I'd recommend having a few rounds with its survival thing, which was one of the big surprises and standouts of that game for me. One of the very best examples of a wave-based co-op survival gametype, i think.

Oblivion definitely got a bit of a undeservedly bad rep among fans. I agree that Oblivion had a lot of really great quest design, and I feel that the thieves guild and the dark brotherhood were the big standouts. Though the main quest is the weakest of the modern TES series, and Oblivion's dungeons are just interminably dull, a feeling i didn't get from either Morrowind or Skyrim. As for Shivering Isles, it stands very much on its own, just do it whenever. It's a great piece of content.

It was a Gamestop/EBGames thing.

That is way, way, way more exciting to me than a multiplayer-only game.

It comes with an inflatable pink chainsaw! I also pre-ordered this, and feel no particular shame in having done so. Have been looking forward to more of Suda's specific brand of punk art nonsense.

I feel like it's that same old problem, the old issue where multiplayer is artificially crammed into a single-player centric game as a misguided value add. Just now it's co-op instead of deathmatch.

Resident Evil 5 and Lost Planet 2 are two games that jump to mind as games that are utterly ruined as solo experiences by having been sloppily designed around co-op. I mean, and now Dead Space 3. (Which unrelatedly also has cover shooting, human enemies, and simplified weapons; the plasma cutter doesn't rotate! Fuck!) I don't want to play a survival horror game with a group of people, i want to be wrapped up in the atmosphere. (Left 4 Dead might be the rare exception, but that's such a different beast.) There are kinds of games that are very demonstrably worse as co-op.

Unless i missed it, i don't think they talk about what will be paid at any point. No, yeah, dude says they aren't talking about it.

I have gotten really cynical about developers announcing co-op for their games. It seems like 90% of the time it's either completely misguided and actively harmful to the game, or just some token throwaway thing that does nothing but divert development resources away from what matters, all in pursuit of a bullet point on a box. (Or a way to justify a first-purchase reward scheme.) Out of this year's E3, Dead Space 3 is the former, Far Cry 3 looks like the latter.

It has been said that a Majora's Mask remake was likely to happen on the 3DS, though i hope it'll get more care than Ocarina did. (Which is generally a very nice remake, but it's filled with bugs, to the extent it actually introduced a ton of new and quite severe ones.) And to me, the best games in the series were always LTTP, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, and Ocarina of Time. (Come on, where's the Wind Waker love?)