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If anything in particular, i think he was probably referring to Jim Sterling's famously/infamously positive 10/10 review of Deadly Premonition. Eghhhh... Destructoid is not a website i can stand to read, so much dumb shit.

So you've played the fan port of Decay, i take it? How is it? Edit: You know, i was skimming over the thread - This is... Wrong, actually. The Combine soldiers are enslaved and augmented humans. All that transhumanist talk Breen keeps spouting on propaganda screens, it comes down to that being the ultimate plan the Combine has for mankind, posthuman soldiers in their army so they can presumably invade and conquer more worlds for resources, technology, and personnel. (The combat synths are generally implied to be or have been actual sentient creatures that they have previously already conquered.) So like, that's some cool world building, it's all just implied instead of overtly forced down your throat. That world is very vague, it encourages you to prod and poke and speculate, it's a lot of very appealing environmental or otherwise unobstructive story-telling. That's what Valve is really good at, and i think that's why people react to it so strongly. (A lot of this holds true for their other games, Portal and L4D especially.) I think a lot of fans misinterpret those things for there actually being a really strong narrative through line, which there really isn't. (Not in my opinion, at least.)

Heh heh, the demo was a unique level that repurposed cut-content from the main game, it actually had a bunch of unique things that aren't in Half-Life proper, and it was very cool. (So, actually, it was to HL1 exactly what Lost Coast is to 2.) Half-Life Uplink, was what it's called.

Pffft, what about the three HL1 add-ons? And the two Portal games? And that old stand-alone HL1 demo?

Are you playing the source port? As i've said, it's a really busted and lazy version of the game, probably the most disappointed i've ever been with Valve. There's a lot of things broken and wrong with it. Does the recoil on the alt for the gauss rifle still kill you instantly? Or did they at least fix that? I guess i haven't played the source version in years, maybe it's better than it used to be.

Well, alright, there are loading breaks, yeah. They're relatively invisible though, you're not looking at a big fat progress bar. The game just pauses up for a few seconds while the levels transition into eachother seamlessly, stopping and starting in the same spot, instead of being big fat mission breaks. Go play those games though, note that you are never taken out of Gordon's perspective for any reason ever. (The ways they try and force you to hold still and pay attention to important plot start feeling a little contrived and forced in the episodes though.)

What? What are you responding to, specifically? I don't think anybody has said anything to warrant this response. Of course an old game won't hold up to modern standards, that's ridiculous to expect. What stands is that for their time, both the original Half-Life and its sequel were revelations. I grew up playing basically every FPS i could, i was watching very closely as this happened, Half-Life changed the way people made shooters. The repercussions of its design are still felt today, and in that ubiquity maybe it doesn't seem as special now, it was still an important and fresh take on how to design a single-player first-person shooter. (I make this same argument for Halo, but that's a different discussion.) I also want to respond to this specifically, you're exactly right. It has for a very long time been incredibly frustrating to me that people keep trying to sell the narrative in Half-Life for all the wrong reasons. The story is not good. It's not. Science happens, aliens invade, Gordon murders a giant fetus. Break to Half-Life 2, different aliens have already invaded, Gordon is Jesus. What was so remarkable about Half-Life was the way it conveyed its narrative without ever breaking from the action for loading screens and cutscenes, it was a consistent and complete journey from beginning to end that never took you out of the protagonist's shoes for any reason. That was what was amazing. And for the record, i also think the weapons in HL2 are really dull. I want snarks back.

That's an unpopular opinion to hold, but i know a number of people who gave the series a legitimate chance and it just never really clicked with them. I personally don't really see or understand what there is to hate, Xen aside, but i wouldn't hold it against anybody. So let me ask, why? What doesn't work for you?

Please, please don't play this. It's a very, very bad version of the original game. They broke a lot of things, and changed other things for the worse. I know rag dolls are awesome and everything, but you're doing HL a big disservice by playing the source port. /me is a huge fan of that original game, still has his launch-day box from 1998. The gearbox expansion packs are also really cool. Opposing Force, especially, really great game. Blue Shift is a bit meh. There was a third expansion pack they did too, Decay, a co-op campaign only in the PS2 version of the game. I've never played it, but i know some modders had ported it to the PC. Gearbox did make it, so if you really want the complete HL experience, that might be worth looking for. None of the Gearbox add-ons really fit into the current HL2 canon though. Shit though, Opposing Force is really great.

Even though i'm not a fan of Street Fighter, and i find SF4 incredibly tough on the timing and execution, i feel like easy operation modes are heresy. There are better ways to make fighting games accessible than just giving less experienced players a game-changing crutch. ( < This is the important part of what i'm saying, don't ignore this.) I mean, and for SF4, being able to map things like charge moves or 720's to a single input is insanity, it completely changes that game. (Sonic booms on reaction, standing 720's!) There are a lot of moves in that game that are balanced by being difficult to do, or have to be buffered by other moves. (The two examples above are big elements of why easy operation stuff doesn't work on the existing SF framework, those are huge game-changing balance issues brought up by your preferred control scheme.) I feel like if you want an accessible fighting game, those ground-level mechanics should be made more accessible, and you shouldn't just lay a flimsy easy-op system over top of what is there. (Hey, that other big fighting game that just came out? MK9? Super, super accessible. Can you pull both triggers at the same time? You can do a match-ending X-ray. See, and beyond that, it's still an incredibly deep and nuanced game. Accessibility done right.)

I really dug this game, and yeah, it is very demanding of the player. I thought all the convoluted manipulation of your inventory gear made it incredibly immersive, like the freakin` wind-up battery for your light amp goggles. A sequel was just announced, should be cool.

I really don't want to just try and dismiss your opinions of the game, that's not what i'm trying to do, but i can't help but feel that maybe you've been approaching the game from the wrong angle. There's been some talk about it of course, but I don't think anybody here is really digging into that high level game. I follow that scene kind of passively, but i'm a total scrub myself. I am a pretty casual fan of fighting games, and am definitely playing a pretty low-end game, but even for me there's a lot of flexibility and possibility i've found in MK9. Probably not as much as some other games, but it's definitely there. Like, special cancels are real important in MK9, if you mix some special moves into those basic canned strings, it really opens things wide up. (Juggles too, very important, especially in the corner.) Say you're playing Scorpion, the move list shows you a BP-FP-BP string. Well don't do just that, do a BP-FP-Spear-BP-FP-Takeout. Twice the damage and still extremely minimal level of execution. The thing here is its definitely not the most efficient or effective combo, you're never going to see people throwing that combo around in guides or anything, it's just something i tried out in the training mode and found worked well for me and my general level of skill, so i started using it. (The lag online also really limits what you can do, and that is a real problem with the game.) Way more important though is that a lot of strategy elements that apply to any fighting game also apply to MK9, baiting attacks and punishing whiffs, high/low mix-ups, etc. (Here's the whole side of fighting games you will never get out of, or even learn from playing solo AI's, figuring out somebody's strategies and breaking them apart will always be the real draw for a good fighting game.) Maybe this helps open up the game a bit for you, but maybe you already knew all this and still didn't like the game, that's certainly your prerogative.

Man, what the hell, what's with all the Samurai Warriors purchases? That's the last game i expected to see played extensively on the 3DS, i am truly perplexed. That's no disrespect either, it's genuine confusion. Is there no love for Ridge Racer? Personally i felt RR3D was the strongest launch game of the ones I've been able to try. This is actually something i've been curious about, how long those transmissions take, and what their range is. I know i at least haven't gotten a streetpass connection while inside of a car yet, i keep getting streetpass tags when i'm in stores and malls and stuff.

If you're just doing player matches, i recommend just trying to find matches in the chat lobbies instead, it'd be much faster. If you're doing ranked... Well, i dunno. ... And no, the netcode is not great. 1v1 is passable, but if you find yourself in a packed king of the hill lobby, it's kind of fucked I think it's mostly playable though, MK9 isn't too demanding, and most of the fighting games I've played online have always been much worse than this. The latency is disappointing though, it can still mess up your timing pretty awfully. Honestly though, the only netcode i've ever seen in a fighting game that i've really been happy with is that of BlazBlue. (Which is nearly perfect online, it's wonderful. I strongly recommend BB: Continuum Shift, it's been very well supported, and has probably the best in-game tutorials i've ever seen. That stuff made me better at fighting games. Period.) The two things i would say that would make a fighting game click are: 1. Have a group of similarly skilled people to play with. 2. Read some fan guides. Seriously. Fighting games typically bring layers and layers of depth to the table and are notoriously awful at making themselves accessible. Just don't be intimidated by videos that show guys banging out 20 hit combos with long complex command strings, virtually nobody is at that level. Focus more on understanding the systems and the strategies, build your own small four or five hit strings that you can bang out reliably, learn the character match-ups and the options available to your preferred character, and have an understanding of basic strategy, like anti-air moves, punishing whiffs, countering pressure or zoning, etc. If you really want to get something out of a fighting game, you have to be willing to invest some time into it, but don't take that to mean you have to master the game, just find a crowd that is at your level. MK9, in particular, is a very straight forward and accessible game mechanically, but its efforts to tutorialize are fairly flimsy and it really only explains the most basic elements. (Which is still more than most fighting games, which often don't even try. MvC3, for example, was shockingly bare bones, but the community around that game really stepped up and put together some amazing guides and tutorials.) So beyond that, Shoryuken.com is slowly putting together a wiki guide for MK9 that might be worth looking at, but it's very much a work in progress, being that the game is brand new.

Mortal Kombat is a fighting game for people who laugh at horror movies, that's the kind of mentality here. Those guys know it's dumb, and they've known it right from the start, it's been the intent. That said, it's not really right to dismiss MK9 as just a silly and goofy toy, Ed Boon wants MK9 to be played at tournaments, and those guys have talked a lot of game about how they want MK9 to be competitively balanced. They want to be taken seriously in that scene, which is something they've never really achieved in the past. (Aside from, arguably, UMK3.) That high-level metagame is largely invisible to most people, but i feel competitive balance makes the experience better for everybody, and I think MK9 seems like it has some solid foundations, but i would also say it's just too early to see how that will all pan out. (Being a new fighting engine, there will be infinites and bugs people find, Netherrealm's response to those issues will be the real test of how MK9 pans out in the end.) But as for people like Twmac who just outright HATE the game, i don't know what to say, i think he's in the minority though. If you want to take the position that MK9 is a horrible broken game, i think you'll find that hard when most people seem to really be having a blast with the game. So might i recommend the "I guess it's just not for me" stance? I am a firm believer in the idea that what works for one person won't necessarily work for somebody else.

Heh, alright, I hadn't really ever considered that, point taken. Jerky and unresponsive? I feel like we're playing different games. Recovery is pretty slow in this game, it really punishes whiffs and dropped inputs, but... What else could you be talking about? There's a lot of canned basic strings, normal combos aren't flexible at all, but if you start playing into special cancels and juggles, the fighting system in MK9 feels like something with a lot of room to play around in. I think it's probably the best an MK game has ever felt, and I don't really think it's fair to condemn a brand new fighting engine after only a week or two. It takes time for people to figure out the mechanics or otherwise educate themselves about them. That whole meta game element has to be considered, the way people play a fighting game can shift dramatically as they come to understand it better. While i don't think i've been as hyperbolic about MK9 as some have, i do think it's a pretty amazing game, but it'll take some time to work out whether or not Netherrealm has succeeded in their goal of creating a tournament level fighting game. (It's at Evo this year, so that should be interesting to see play out.) But hey, you don't agree and that's cool. Everybody is allowed to have opinions. What you would find is that most people are pretty shit at fighting games. Myself included, to be honest. Even if you're lacking in that controller discipline, as long as you can have a basic understanding of the game systems and a group of similarly skilled people, you can have amazing fun in spite of yourself. Even though i found that it just really didn't hold my attention as a player, MvC3 is pretty spectacular to see played competitively. I've always felt Bayonetta was a bit of an odd case in that Bayonetta is not so much objectified as is completely a dominant force, but generally i agree with this kind of sentiment. Seriously. Sonya Blade's bullet proof vest in MK9 has cleavage. what.

I wouldn't expect that it has anything to do with that, the engine is still a 3D one after all, Unreal 3 in fact. Probably just very optimized, Midway Chicago/Netherrealm has been working with that engine for at least four years now. (MKvsDC was also Unreal 3, and had a very similar story mode too.) I do find it interesting that fighting games in general seem to have shifted back to 2D so strongly though, 3D fighters seem to be in the minority again.

So Megaman Legends 3 is going to have a demo available at the launch of the 3DS eShop, and response to that will apparently determine the fate of that game. (Which Capcom is alleged to have still not fully green lit.) It's probably, at least in part, a bit of Capcom marketing savvy, trying to rile up the fanbase to increase visibility for the thing. Still really looking forward to it though, and the brief bit of gameplay footage looks cool, at least. (Just skip to the end of that to see the game in action.)

Heh, i've been through five 360's myself. Mostly red rings, but one was a failed disc drive.

Hah, i'm glad somebody made this topic, i don't seem to have rights for topic-creation as a board newbie. Anyways, MK9 is pretty fantastic. Net code is pretty iffy, there's definitely a lot of latency, but MK9 is pretty low execution, and it's more or less playable to a satisfactory degree. Though, i am pretty pissed off about one thing. I was promised four player tag matches online, and there is, but only with two people on each end. You can only have two connections in any match. Kind of ruins the plans the group i play with had, bah. Game has lots of great solo content, Ed Boon and his crew have always been good about that. The story mode is basically building off of what they were doing with MKvsDC, but with an even greater level of polish. It really almost makes Mortal Kombat's convoluted and goofy ass mythology respectable, heh. There's some cool twists in this continuity reboot too if you're a long-time fan of the series. It's not just that story mode though, it's the Soul Calibur-style challenge mode, the krypt, and traditional arcade-mode endings on top of it all. Really a lot of content. (kontent?) Man, and so many dumb, awesome secrets. People are going to be digging through this game for quite a while, i bet. The core fighting engine feels pretty solid, perhaps a little inflexible compared to some of the other top tier 2d fighters on the market, and probably a little teleport heavy. Though this makes for an aggressive game, turtling does not fly here, everybody has a lot of options for closing distances fast. Combo breakers are back, and are still a thing more fighting games should do. Enhanced moves are actually very interesting in that they don't -just- give you a more powerful version of the basic specials, they radically change some variables for some moves, definitely something to play around with. X-rays especially though, can be completely devastating, but they're not a win button. You have to be really careful when your opponent has full meter, but X-rays are punishable if you take care. (Which is exactly the way it should be, of course.) The characters all seem pretty cool, nobody seems egregiously broken. (Kung Lao has some merciless wall combos, Baraka seems kind of useless... That's about all i've noticed.) Really been having a lot of fun with it, very much recommended. It's not just a return to UMK3 or MK2, it's definitely a new game, but it feels like they've taken the best elements from across the entire series, and a few ideas from other modern fighting games, and it just feels really, really good.

If the reviews have interesting things to say, and can speak from a place without a lot of pretense, it's something that would get my attention. When i say i don't read reviews, i specifically mean that i really hate these institutionalized review mills like IGN and Gamespot, that try to establish a uniform voice for the website. You're kind of left guessing about the conditions for a review, if the writer actually knows what he's saying, or had simply rushed through a review. (Gah!) I much prefer when sites allow their writers to be individuals and speak to their own tastes. I really like what the guys at Giant Bomb have been doing, for example. There's a lot of transparency there, i guess. You get to know those guys, and know what it means when they say something. Even when they do something dumb, it still ends up being more valuable to me as a reader. Still... Reviews, meh. I wish there was more intelligent discussion about a game, more people really dissecting these things, instead of just passively evaluating their contents. It's a shame so many developers are so tight-lipped about their games, i would so love to see more post mortem-style features.

We disagree, but you get points for reminding me of KKND being a thing that existed, heh. I take your KKND and raise you one Dark Colony. Yeah, yeah! Lets talk about obscure RTS games. Is there a thread for that?

GoG has Total Annihilation, so you should all play it. (Because it's the best game ever.) ... Really, it is. Or maybe just the best RTS ever, but it's up there. I'm serious. I played that game like every week for 6 or 7 years, it's so good. (If my words actually convince any of you to play it, i'd be happy to share some pointers, the game can be hugely overwhelming if you've only ever played Starcraft or C&C or something.)

Note* - I'm kind of just rambling off my own opinions here. I don't really know that i'm responding to anything in particular. I basically never really read reviews anymore. There's a small handful of individuals in the critical community whose reviews i will read mostly out of curiosity, but basically my game purchases come down to me educating myself about what the game offers, and deciding if i want that. I don't need people to tell me if i will like a game, i know what kind of games i like. Or maybe i don't know, maybe i'm taking a risk. I've discovered a lot of great games by being told they're horrible and then playing them anyways out of morbid curiosity. That's just me though, i understand perfectly why most people wouldn't be willing to risk their time and money like that. Which raises another problem, a lot of the kinds of games i've found that i really like almost never score well with the mainstream critics. You know, mech games, scrolling shooters. When was the last time you saw review mills gushing over anything like that? Or things that are just creatively and intellectually interesting, but kind of busted in some big ways. Really anything with a barrier of entry that isn't building off of some common established norm. The way reviews are written is inherently contrary to people being able to enjoy games like that. So how many people out there are avoiding games they would probably really like because they're just taking reviews at face value? Also, i personally find review scores to be really idiotic and tiring, but... god, people are obsessed with them. I even have to catch myself some times when i'm trying to convince somebody that a game is worth playing to not just drag out the metacritic score or something dumb like that. It's just such easy shorthand, but the things it leads to are really horrendous, both for the industry and the consumer. I mean, but when you have people arguing about why a 8.5 game is worse than an 8.7 game, and seeing the companies making those games start buying into that, it's just horrendous. (And then if somebody tries to take a stand against that, it gets even worse! I remember when CGW tried to drop review scores, and -everybody- flipped their shit about it. They had to apologize and bring back scores.)

Hey, so some fellow shmuppers here, that's cool. Bangai-O Missile Fury comes out on May 4th, i hope you guys know, and it looks really, really amazing. It was supposed to be out last year, but Treasure delayed it to implement some online co-op. Also, you guys should check out Strania, it just came out on XBLA a couple weeks ago for ten bucks. It's a new game from G.Rev, who you might possibly be familiar with for their Senko no Ronde games and Border Down, or failing that, it's worth noting they're a studio that has worked with Treasure in the past. (Ikaruga and Gradius V, in particular, are running on G.Rev's tech.) Strania is pretty awesome though, it's a pretty old-school kind of shmup too, if any of you find newer bullet hell shooters off-putting.