Sno

I know a few people who are incredibly psyched for this, but i haven't decided if i want to get on board myself. Love Splash Damage's earlier games though, and it does look very, very promising.

The iOS game is a spin-off, it's completely unrelated to the other two Mushimesama games. (Which, as i understand it, are generally known for their incredibly intricate and impressive bullet patterns and being some of the games Cave has put out. Of course, they do have easy modes though, i hear. Heh.) Well, i'm not really following that whole PSN mess anymore, but... I wouldn't go around expecting free stuff with no strings attached. I'm going to assume the free games Sony is saying they'll give people are the typical "free" games you get with PSN+. So those freebies will probably only last as long as that PSN+ trial that they're going to give everybody lasts. That's how PSN+ works, you only have access to that "free" stuff for as long as you're subscribed to PSN+. Anyways, no. It seems Treasure is pretty dedicated to XBLA as a platform, and i've heard nothing about Bangai-O Missile Fury coming out anywhere else. (Ikaruga's HD update never did, and their other XBLA projects have thus far been marketed as XBLA exclusives.)

After putting so much effort into reinventing that series, i seriously can't imagine they'd go back to the original fiction. The crux of Far Cry 2 seemed to be "Please forget all those awful X-box games we did." They ran all that good will Crytek's game had into the ground pretty quickly. I'd guess Far Cry 3 would be either a direct sequel to 2, or another big non-sequitur, but i can't see them going back to Carver and the Trigens.

I really, truly cannot fathom playing a bullet hell game without digital inputs. Also, if you do imports, you know that Cave has been purposefully leaving some of their games region free on the 360, right? I can't remember off the top of my head which ones they were, but there was like three different ones in just the last couple years. Edit: Mushihime-sama Futari 1.5 on the 360 is not region locked. (There's a black label remix mode that appears to only be available on the japanese marketplace, and may or may not be region free as well? Not really sure. It would, obviously, at the least require a japanese live account, i guess.) Espgaluda II is also region free. (There's also a black label re-release with the remixed mode on-disc that is also apparently region free.) I'm sure there was another region free one, but i can't figure out what it was... Oh, it was "Muchi Muchi Pork & Pink Sweets" So... yeah... there's that... Anyways, so... Have any of you guys been playing Bangai-O Missile Fury?

Now i'm seeing reports that the XBLA Guardian Heroes port is in fact being developed by Treasure. Given that there's so much confusion about it, i suspect Treasure is probably just overseeing it or something.

David Cronenberg is a master of body horror. If you feel like having your mind further defiled, i would recommend Videodrome.

It depends entirely on how much money they spent making and marketing it, selling two million copies is no longer any guarantee you'll get a sequel. (While lots of indie outfits will survive for years on sales in the low thousands, it's all a cost-vs-profit equation.)

You can tag threads? Edit: Oh, I see... So... What's really the use of this?

Huh. So how do you control them? Just drag the ship around with the touchscreen, or some kind of horrible virtual analog setup? Do you know if the difficulty is toned down or anything? I've always been curious about these iOS Cave ports.

To me, Far Cry 2 seemed to be exactly what it wanted to be, there isn't really anything i'd wish to see changed. Maybe a less hostile world with that isn't solely populated with bad guys? (Or, you know, random death jeeps flying out of the brush to plow you over.)

New discussion - Hey, you know what was pretty cool? Snarks. Snarks are pretty cool. The first Half-Life was loaded with crazy weapons. HL2, not so much. It gets a lot of credit for the gravity gun, but... everything else is kind of a standard tool set. I guess the alt-fire on the overwatch rifle is pretty cool, and there's the hot-rebar crossbow.

Right, right.. "PC FPS" right.. *facepalm* Edit: Though you didn't originally make that distinction, but... whatever.

Alright ThunderPeel, alright. Yes, absolutely. Let's just put this all aside, its a dumb series of misunderstandings. I'm willing to admit, and already have, a lot of the confusion is my fault. The whaa? Ok, available information puts Half-Life at around eight million sales. Individual games in both the Halo and CoD series have far, far exceeded that. (Modern Warfare 2 has sold well over twenty million copies world wide. Gaaah!)

I am suspicious of this, are those games really playable to an adequate degree on the iPad? Really?...

To be honest, it's nothing super exciting, it's just a stripped down and rebalanced version of SC4 with some basic tutorials and a couple new characters. (Including Kratos!) The MP options it offers aren't very ideal, so people still just play SC4. It's certainly a capable Soul Calibur game though, and if you like that series, it's nice to have a portable version. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on Patapon, that game is pretty trippy and cool. (And hard as shit, holy god.) You will hear Patapons chanting in your head while you sleep.

Any bright lights, big windows? Sunlight can really mess with the pointer. Still... Ah, i see... That sucks. There's a few Wii games that i think are absolutely gorgeous to look at, and that the Wii wouldn't seem so dated if it could push out HD resolutions. (Metroid Prime 3 and the Galaxy games are the ones that come to mind.) I think the problem is that there's no real expectation for high-end visuals on the Wii, given the audience Nintendo platforms tend to pull in, so nobody really tries. I think it's a problem the Gamecube faced as well. It's usually not thought of as powerful hardware given the kinds of games that were released for it, but it was actually a relative beast, almost as powerful as the x-box and far more capable than the PS2. (Once again, what i feel are the best looking games on the Gamecube were first-party Nintendo games, Metroid Prime and Wind Waker.) I don't think Nintendo simply putting out a more powerful console will end this trend of people making cheaper looking games for the Nintendo platforms. I feel it's probably a combination of people not even really trying to compete with Nintendo on their own terms, and the market not really demanding it. Whenever 3rd party devs do try to step up on Nintendo platforms, they tend to get steamrolled. (Hey, Conduit 2 just came out, did anybody buy that? No? Ok.)

Since my last post in this thread, i've been playing Ys: Oath in Felghana, and it's instantly become one of my favorite PSP games. I immediately went out and tracked down copies of the other two Ys games Xseed has localized to North America. I feel a little bummed that i've been missing out on this series all these years. I've also read that you can get the Xseed-localized Ys games on PSN in Europe. So i recommend it. It's sold as an RPG, but the character building elements are really very light, the focus on the action is very heavy. (It's fast paced too, it just screams along.) Really, rather than an RPG, it feels about as deep as a Castlevania game. There's even a big exploration element, using newly gained navigational abilities to navigate further and deeper into new areas of old dungeons. (Though the overall gameworld seems fairly small, doesn't seem like a huge game.) Your character also has a pretty rudimentary move set and combo system, there's a big emphasis on player skill. You know, in general, the PSP is probably the best system to have if you're at all interested in obscure JRPG's. (Generally, i am not, but the emphasis on speedy action in Ys is super appealing to me.) It also has an amazing soundtrack, holy crap.

Why are we still discussing it? Because you asked about it. And again, the part of my post where i discuss the game is the part you didn't respond to. I hadn't stopped talking about the game. Please stop being defensive, i'm not trying to be patronizing, i'm not trying to insult. I strongly disagree with the use of metacritic as a measuring stick, it was brought up a few times, and i wanted to voice disagreement with it. That is all. Ok, we're past that and many points still stand, Half-Life is still an extremely well regarded game. (That sales thing though, i don't know where you got that. There are many, many games that vastly exceed Half-Life in terms of sales.)

Remember when there were rumors about an Assassin's Creed game set during the French Revolution? I'd still like to see that.

Egh, i guess we have had some communications breakdown, though a lot of my comments have also just been general musings about reviews and criticism. I see now how it could have been misconstrued. I really don't know, i'm kind of on the fence about it. I think it's, for the most part, an elegantly designed game that paved the way for shooters in the next decade. I don't think influential equates to those ideas having been the best ones for the genre though, i don't really like a lot of the things i feel Half-Life has begotten. That is perhaps immaterial to the game itself, but it's inextricably linked to my opinion of that game. This gets back to the point i was trying to make earlier, i don't think you can ever fully remove yourself from the context surrounding a game and view it the same way it would have been when it was new. Whether that idea is relevant to you or not, i cannot say, i just felt it was a point worth making. So all that said, I would be inclined to hold games that are often more overlooked in higher regards. Champion those games, so to speak. (Games like System Shock 2, which is without question my favorite game. Period.) I think we disagree on some points, but clearly we have had some miscommunication if you think i'm attacking you for failing to enjoy Half-Life as much as me. In direct response to your situation, the main point i was trying to make is that i don't understand why you should continue to try so hard to understand Half-Life after you've given the game a genuine chance and found that you don't like it. I recognize the point you're making about wanting to understand why it's such a critically acclaimed game, and i guess i just don't hold the critical community in as high regard. (As for metacritic, please don't use metacritic to argue a point. It's a flawed mechanism, it's an aggregate of websites with different scales and dubious methodology for sorting it all out. It's bad. Metacritic is bad.)

BG&E2 has apparently been in production with a small team for a few years now. Every time people start freaking out that it's been canceled, Ancel pops up and says it's still in development.

Fair enough, but i can at least assure you with relative certainty that the bugs concerning the giant fan and the electrified water puddle puzzles are not present in original copies of the game. I do remember actually following that game during its development, and i bought my copy the day of its release. Now that was nearly thirteen years ago*, so i can't really tell you with certainty was the mood was like around its release, but clearly there was anticipation if i bought my copy the day of its release. I also remember that the game was delayed many times and that nobody really had a good handle on what was going to make it so special. (* - Oh my god, i feel old.) I guess i'm saying metacritic scores are dumb, and i don't agree with saying it's the greatest PC game of all time because metacritic arbitrarily compiled a bunch of arbitrary scores? I can think of many PC games i would hold in much higher regard. It's that whole "video games are subjective" thing. It was a lot the things you've said and this comment from an earlier post of yours - When games are really, really well received, a lot of it has to do with historical context of its release. I can guarantee you that Ocarina of Time's 3DS remake won't be as universally acclaimed as the original game was, because Ocarina was a revelation when it was release, and now it's old hat. (So expect 8.5's and ludicrous fanboy rage. Scores are fucking dumb.) Playing Half-Life today is going to make it seem less impressive, there's nothing you can do about it, the mechanics and design elements that were innovative are now ubiquitous. So don't base your expectations around reviews written over a decade ago.

Obsidian's Dungeon Siege 3 will have drop-in co-op that lets the joiners "suggest" dialogue choices while the host has final say. It's the kind of simple solution that might still not be ideal, but could go a long way to making something like that feel more involving.

I'll give you Twilight Princess, the Wii version of that game is largely ruined by motion control for me as well. Really wish i had played the Gamecube version. (Which is unfortunately extremely rare.) Galaxy though, really? The motion control in both of the Galaxy games is so cursory as to not even really be there. Waggle to spin, and tilt control in a couple of gimmick stages. That's it.

Mass Effect 3 with drop-in co-op, buddies showing up to take control of your party members. Is not a thing i would be horrified to see.