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For this reason, i've always felt Advance Wars works better as a multiplayer/skirmish game. (When it's balanced well, which it hasn't been for a couple games now.)

Every story that comes out of Capcom these days makes it sound like it's a bitter, unending struggle with the higher-ups to get anything made. Doesn't seem like a great environment to work in, and certainly it's driven away many of the individuals that made Capcom a company worth caring about in the first place. As for the numbering thing, it feels like it might just be another small nod to the original megaman. (Except the numbering is inverted, because Megaman/Rock was number 1 of Dr Light's bots, Roll was 2, and the six bosses of that game were 3 through 8. Protoman wasn't introduced until Megaman 3, but he was 0. No, not that Zero.) Also, i love the names "Beck" and "Call", and now there won't be a messy localization to ruin the pun.

The kickstarter makes it sound like they're carrying on with a lot of the things they were doing with the ZX games, particularly the stuff they did in Advent, so it's definitely not just a thinly veiled remake of the original. And the original Megaman was remade, it was awesome. It had new bosses and new levels, you could even play as the bosses, and there was a level editor and online level sharing.

It seems the game is having a free weekend on Steam, so if anybody's interested, there's still another day to go. It's also on sale right now for about six bucks. I guess they're doing this too, which seems like a pretty cool way to fund further development of the game without splitting the userbase. I will say though, i had a few games with friends a couple nights ago, and people seemed really unhappy with the newest balance updates. I still think it's worth checking out though.

Sure, alright, but is it wrong to want Nintendo to do it for the real game? It's totally still something they should do.

Using Sasha to generate extra income, switching over to Colin so you could buy units cheap, and then back to Sasha so you could use them without any debuffs. Or using Sensei to summon infantry to every controlled city, and then switching over to Sami for her massive infantry buffs. Dual Strike is hilariously unbalanced. Back on the topic of a 3DS sequel, i would really like to have some manner of play-by-mail. I want to be able to upload a turn to a central server for an opponent to later respond to. (I guess with some general time limit, so if an opponent abandons the game, it counts against them as a forfeit.) You know, so you can have online matches without being held captive while waiting for your opponent to take their turn.

Having been the one that brought this to your attention, i am obviously super excited about seeing Keiji Inafune and a bunch of old hands from Capcom making a spiritual successor to the Megaman series. (Capcom's really been hemorrhaging an alarming amount of talent over the last few years.) It's quite obvious that this is being fueled on the bad feelings for Capcom's treatment of that series, but it just shows how much the fans actually cared about that stuff. I hope this project goes well.

A lot of times you'll find yourself locked in a room with twenty scannables, just one of which that will open the door, so it's pretty hard to completely avoid. Try not to feel like you have to rush through it, that game is very atmospheric, just chill out and enjoy it. (The Trilogy version of the first Metroid Prime is missing some nice visual effects, but it's still an alright version of the game.)

You are horrible.

I didn't notice this post before, i want to respond to it. Zero Mission is actually the hardest game in the series to 100%, some of the expansions require some really gnarly tricks. You'll probably be surprised, going back to earlier games, to find that stuff like those shinespark tricks are never actually required for anything, they're purely there for sequence breaks and speedruns. I have played every Metroid game and the original never really clicked for me either, it's just such a primordial-feeling game. There are clear cases to make for why it's an important game, but i don't think it holds up as something to play. (Also, i've never really spent much time with the original Kid Icarus, but most people i know who have seem to haaate it.) Metroid 2, on the other hand, catches a lot of flak for being the odd duck of the original series, having a somewhat more linear structure, but it's a game i've always really loved. It has a ton of really moody, creepy ambient themes, and also defined a less overtly cartoonish visual aesthetic for the series. (Most of the sequels have hewn very closely to Metroid 2's designs for Samus.) It also established a lot of new items and other small, important conventions for the series, like being able to shoot downwards and having a normal crouch in addition to the morphball. (It can be jarring going back to the original game and realizing you can't hit one block tall enemies.)

Days of Ruin's/Dark Conflict's one core failing is an anti-tank unit that is hilariously broken and over-powered, and also, just in general, Advance Wars probably didn't need a grimdark reboot. Honestly though, that game's pretty alright, it really doesn't deserve as much flak as it gets. It actually tried to do some things that needed to happen, like redesigning some core systems to try and address the old stalemate problem, while also trying to strip out a lot of the fluff that got piled on with Dual Strike. (Which is, even though i love it, and even though it has sooooo much content, actually kind of a terrible game. It is the most broken and most problematic entry in the series.) For my money, Advance Wars 2 was the best game in the series. (Also had the hardest campaign, that game is ruthless with the puzzle-like precision it requires.)

1. There already was an FEA thread, perhaps a mod might merge this one. 2. I don't actually know, i think you have to clear the event to open up the shop. You don't have to fight streetpass encounters though, you can dismiss those, buy items from those, or even hire their avatar. (Or fight them and win their avatar.) 3. 25 story missions, 23 "paralogues", and then all the random battles, streetpass battles, spotpass battles, and DLC battles you may encounter along the way. 4. I understand the DLC is well written and well made, they're large and elaborate missions with a lot of story, but they're also ultimately a bit sketchy as they're geared towards easy grinding and easy farming. Also: SPOTPASS. Go into your wireless menu and download all that stuff. Just run through the list and click it all into your game, there's actually free additional story missions in there too that unlock late in the game, and those you definitely want to have. They even have extra recruitment possibilities for new and properly fleshed-out story characters. (The renown list too, just click that stuff into your game. Everything highlighted is actually unlocked, you're not exchanging renown like a currency.) The exception is the spotpass legacy battles, don't click those over into your game until you want to do them, since they populate your world like streetpass battles, except you summon them at will. So here's this other weird element of FEA: Streetpass/spotpass characters. You can have twenty at a time in your army, or 99 stored in the wireless menu roster, and they're either legacy characters from previous games or custom avatars recruited from other players. You can even go into that library section of the wireless menu and resummon them after they die, effectively circumventing the permadeath system. (Though there's usually an extremely high gold cost associated with summoning a higher level character.) There is one huge downside though, and it's why i don't use any of the spotpass/streetpass characters. They have no supports to build, and that's a pretty severe limitation. (Again though, the extra recruitable story characters from those spotpass story missions do have supports, they are normal story characters.) Also, since my FEA posts will probably be lost in the 3DS thread, and since they might be useful to other new players: this, this, this, and this.

It's been a while since i checked, but i'm pretty sure i've got my facts straight: As long as it's not a DSi cart, there's no region code for the 3DS to identify and potentially block, and original DS carts can be identified by the NTR prefix on the product code. (Very few games with DSi features were ever released, so it's exceedingly unlikely that you own any. If you do have any DSi carts, they'll still run in original DS's. Those games will just hide any DSi features in that circumstance, and since the pre-DSi hardware doesn't check for any region codes, no worry of region locks.)

Yeah, EDF:IA had online co-op on the 360. 2025 is supposed to have online co-op too, isn't it?

Even prior to this, i've noticed more and more games with incredibly flimsy implementation of 3D. A hud element or two hovering out in front, with the actual game running completely in 2D, but just kind of oddly sunk into the depth of the screen like it's hoping you might not even notice it's cheating you out of a nicer image. You know, and there were certainly a number of other games that would show just massive performance problems when the 3D was enabled. Nintendo was obviously losing ground not just with players, but with developers too. So the games with the best 3D have been, not surprisingly, Nintendo's games. Super Mario 3D Land is the big shiny paragon there, an example of how it can positively benefit the gameplay, but it's certainly also had some less tangible benefits for other games. Back on Fire Emblem Awakening, that game's environments can look a little bland when it's played in 2D, but then you flip on the 3D and it brings out these subtle rolling hills and other details, it looks really great. You know, but if they want to make a cheaper 3DS, that fancy autostereoscopic screen was the one thing they were able to pull out without breaking a ton of games. It might make some games harder to play, but it won't make anything unplayable. Having thought on it, the 2DS probably makes sense, but it's definitely not for me. I've actually grown to like the 3D, so if i ever replace my launch 3DS, it'll be with an XL.

On the topic of indie games always coming to Steam, it's worth pointing out that it's the XBLA games that are coming to Steam. (Even ones directly published by Microsoft.) The ones published by Sony to PSN stay on PSN. It's rather unfortuante.

I am curious though, have any of you guys played Robot Alchemic Drive? It's one of Sandlot's earlier games, and it's pretty much the best game ever: Each analog stick controlled one of the arms, inputs kind of intuitively correlating to different available attacks. There were a lot of special moves too. I mean, of course there's a rocket punch. Oh yeah, and you're a dude running around the battlefield controlling your robot with a remote. You're constantly repositioning yourself so that you're close enough to have a good view, but not getting so close that you end up squished by a monster you send flying through a skyscraper.

Yes.

There's enough of it that it behooves Nintendo to not break it, there's a lot of incidental uses in big games. (Kid Icarus Uprising, for example.) Off the top of my head i could name maybe ten games that use it, and i think there's probably a few dozen total uses of AR on the 3DS. It shows up in a lot of weird places. Of the actual, dedicated AR games/mini-games i've played, they've all been really experimental little things that range from merely neat to completely broken, so it doesn't build confidence in the 3DS's AR future. The games that are built around tracking objects on a table generally work pretty well, but the ones that rely on the 3DS's motion sensor for tracking are just about completely fucked. (Except for that built in game, Face Raiders, which has you flailing around so wildly that you don't even notice when the sensor loses track of you, or perhaps the exaggerated motions it requires you to make are making it easier for the game to track you.) There are plenty of interesting possibilities with augmented reality, but i don't think the hardware is enough there that it warrants anything especially involved.

I feel like the "games as a service" future is a dark road. Good for publishers and good for developers doesn't necessarily equate to being good for consumers.

My immediate reaction would be to wonder if it has something to do with the augmented reality, requiring its cameras to have depth perception for that stuff to work. (Or perhaps not wanting to break compatibility with existing AR games.)

The GB, GBC, and GBA all had their own unique libraries of games. The GB Pocket just played GB games. It was the Gameboy's DS lite. Yeeeaaaaaah. I suppose. The DSi is a weird thing.

So i guess mostly everybody hates it, there's plenty of anger going around against the game for apparently flagrant sexism, and i've seen many poorly written reviews complaining in frustratingly vague terms of technical faults. The internet is painting a pretty baffling and bafflingly incomplete picture of the game. Has anybody played it? I don't always love Suda's games, but i always find them interesting, so i'm pretty much guaranteed to be there for this one too. Curious to see what the feeling here is.

The DSi was still DS hardware, just with a bunch of new stuff bolted onto it. The GBC was actual new hardware with a new cartridge format. The logic seems clear to me. DSi is a DS, GBC is not a GB.

There were three. The Gameboy, the Gameboy Color, and the Gameboy Advance. Some people would conflate the GB and the GBC, but those people are crazy.