Sno

I already talked about it a bit here, but seeing the responses, it's probably worth a topic of its own. I think it's an immensely fun multiplayer game with a good amount of content, but there's some minor netcode issues, really archaic match-making, and a disappointing solo campaign. It is by a fair margin the most flawed game Platinum has put out, but there's still a lot to like. (There's also that 30 dollar price tag that Sega has applied to it for the western release.)

Like the trigger click on the Gamecube controller, it's one of those small controller innovations that just didn't really ever catch on in a big way. The only game i can even think of that used the GC trigger click was Metroid Prime. (Where holding down the trigger would lock-onto a target, and then pressing harder for that last click would swap targets. I though that was a pretty good use of that feature, but even with all the games on the GC that feature a lock-on, the two Metroid Prime games were the only ones that did it.)

Alright, yeah, looks like i was wrong about the 360. The dualshocks definitely have em` though, i remember San Andreas having the accelerator mapped to X and the applied pressure changing your speed. I have to point out how important these are to many games for being an extra button you can hit without taking your thumbs off the sticks. (I've also never had a problem with accidental/intentional clicks,)

Those Razer pads are awful, they're just horrible. A nice list of appealing features, but the build quality is atrocious. Every single person i've talked to about that thing has said theirs broke within a month, mine broke after only a few days. Never buying another Razer product again. Additionally, the Dual Shock 2 and 3, as well as all the Microsoft pads on both the original X-box and the 360, all already have pressure sensitive face buttons. It's just nothing uses them. (What would you really even do with them? Nobody really ever figured it out, so they're still there, but they may as well not be.) As for wishlists, let me throw this dumb one out there: I want extra buttons on the back of the pad at the inside of the handles. I have three extra fingers on each hand that are doing nothing when i play. Cramming more buttons and features on the face and up by the triggers just makes it harder to do simultaneous actions.

Just did the second one, not a whole lot to say about it, it's one of the less involved and impressive fights in the game. If the next one is the one i think it is, i'm looking forward to next week.

Well, Nano Assault Neo for Wii U, the other remake of that game, is ten bucks. So that's probably what you can expect to spend.

There's a lot of great, subtle animation in Dead Space, like the way Isaac's posture changes in the zero gravity environments or the way he tip toes through some nasty meat sludge, or how the melee attacks all convey just the right amount of panic and disgust. (Isaac's barks and grunts are pretty great too. With no spoken dialogue, you get the sense that he's as grossed out as you are.) I also felt like Dead Space 2 lost a lot in how it handled its zero gravity environments. Free floating movement ended up just being actually much less interesting than pushing off between different surfaces and then walking around with mag boots. More specifically though, the first game simply actually does stuff with those environments, but virtually nothing happens in DS2's zero gravity environments. (Relative to the first game, there are far, far fewer enemy encounters in those portions of DS2. You basically start perceiving them as safe zones, and it kind of breaks the tension.)

Wait, what? It's not yet available in North America either. The retail game was, but the eShop release hasn't come out anywhere yet, and by most accounts, it will be a dramatically expanded version of the game.

I've heard the PS3 boomerang was actually really comfortable to use.

There's a certain charm to how little Monster Hunter takes itself seriously, like the goofy girlish run your character puts on when he sprints away from a close threat, all those little details. Anyways, they're both big animation-priority kind of games, but i think the big difference is that in the Souls games, you are chaining together a lot of small moves with less individual commitment, and you're doing it in a context where you can really control the pace of an encounter. In Monster Hunter, you're very much at the whims of whatever large beasts are roaming the game environment, and a good strong hit will lock you down for several seconds. As opposed to the methodical, controlled nature of Dark Souls, Monster Hunter is a very unpredictable, flailing, and ridiculous game. (With a pretty satisfying Kkchunk sort of feel to landing big hits.) I actually do really like Monster Hunter though, but you really need a good multiplayer group to mentor you through to the point where it starts to click. The first Dead Space is one of my favorite games of the last five years, the second game goes a little too hard in the action direction, and i'm pretty concerned about the third game. (Let's just hope it doesn't completely follow the RE4-6 arc.) I think the whole "strategic dismemberment" thing is pretty brilliant though, trying to change up the gameplay language a bit so you're not just going for headshots, but instead are attacking enemies in different ways to respond to different situations. Binary Domain also really focuses on stuff like that as well, and i liked it there too. I mean, there have been games where enemies would react differently to being shot in the shoulder than if in the leg, but it didn't honestly change the dynamic of the battle afterwards, which is what is happening with games like these.

There's a Fire Emblem: Awakening demo up eShop, it seems pretty rad from a few minutes of hands-on. The general buzz has been that it might be the best one since the GBA games, which would be awesome, because i love that series in theory, but haven't actually liked any of the games since the GBA ones.

The AI in that game is brilliant, you just never see it play out that way when you go flying into a room and kill everybody before they can even respond. I have always felt that FEAR would have actually been a way better game without the bullet time gimmick. Speaking of shooters, god damn do i love the Unreal weapons. There are so many tricks built into each of those guns, just one of the most nuanced, balanced, and creative selections in a shooter. There's like six ways to use the rocket launcher in Unreal. You can fire a single missile or charge up for a cluster of missiles that you can fire as a focused shot or in a spread pattern, and you can also lock onto an enemy for a homing shot. In certain games you can even fire them like grenades, and you can charge that too. The Unreal rocket launcher knows no restraint, but It was all useful functionality! Or the old shock rifle combos, or gnarly translocator telefrags, or even the damn impact hammer instant kill/rocket jump.

It's very manageable on normal, i feel. It can spin out of control if you don't have a handle on things, but if you have a good build plan, it's mostly fine. SS2 on hard can be pretty fucked up, and i won't even touch impossible. (Receiving fewer cyber modules on the harder difficulties makes the difficulty curve feel like a receding goal. No matter how you spin things, you're underpowered. You need to just laser focus in on two or three things you want to be able to do well.) Edit: I am incorrect, you don't receive fewer cyber modules, all of the upgrade costs are instead increased. Effectively the same thing. Nanite costs are also increased all around.

Your initial comment stated that the game was "horribly unbalanced" because of the respawn. That, as well as general disdain for the degradation, are common sentiments about the game, and i just want to provide a counter point to it.

It helps to know what strafe jumping is, namely that it's a movement bug in Q3A that allows you to accelerate ridiculously while stringing together jumps with just the right movement. Like rocket jumping, it's another Quake bug that was just kind of welcomed into the canon.

I'm trying to think of an interesting way to articulate it, but i think a lot of my comments about combat systems would just end up retreading my thoughts on what constitutes well balanced difficulty in games, that everything should have its time and place. I feel like brawlers can learn a lot from fighting games, the design mindset where every move has a distinct utility and drawback. To be completely honest, i think God of War has traditionally been very weak in this regard, while I think DMC has actually always been one of the most sterling examples of it. (On top of which there exists a combo system with no purpose other than to encourage you to be even more stylish and take even more risks.) Also, you should definitely check out Bayonetta.

Strictly speaking, they're not pure cyberpunk, but there's the two System Shock games, of course.

Similarly, one of the most derided aspects of RE6 has been the lack of feedback the enemies give while taking damage, relative to how reactive they were in RE4. Even in a game like Halo, there's that detail where you can see the shields gradually balloon out and finally pop as damage mounts against an enemy. Good, intuitive feedback is awesome, and a truly top-shelf game will use it to nudge the player towards the right tactics. As for DMC, i finally just played the demo for Ninja Theory's game and found it fairly impressive, but on a personal note, also kind of bewildering. After all the time i've put into the original games, having so many of the same moves available, but the control be completely different, is a total muscle memory nightmare. (Definitely didn't like not having a lock-on.) It seems like a fine game though, i want to play it. I think DMC3 was the best game in that series though, and i would argue that it might actually be the best game of its kind. (Spiritual successor Bayonetta is also a pretty phenomenal game, seriously considering buying a Wii U to play Bayonetta 2.)

I have definitely never had to speed run through System Shock 2 to cope with the enemy respawn or the degradation. (I mean, I always pretty meticulously explore every corner of the ship and also usually end up doing loads of back-tracking for other tasks like the research goals.) The patch always comes up like it's Irrational's acknowledgement of a fuck-up, but what does the patch not do? It doesn't actually adjust either of those mechanics, it simply enables the option to do so, and then still, not even in-game. The degradation and enemy respawn were unpopular design decisions and the hastily added functionality in that patch reflects only on the community's response to those mechanics. I do not feel like the relative unpopularity of those mechanics invalidates the choices the designers made while developing that game. I hate the revisionism in people trying to push their own ideal version of that game. Entertainment is too subjective for that kind of shit, there needs to be some regard for the original intent. They made a difficult, uncompromising, and unforgiving game that is completely aware of what it is. It expects for you to die and literally taunts you during some of the hardest parts of the game. The themes of its narrative are in step with its game design, it is scary both as a story and as a game. You just saw a ghostly phantom crying for help, then you listened to an unbelievably unnerving audio log depicting a gruesome murder, and now you think you hear an enemy coming up behind you, but you're low on ammunition and your gun is almost broken. It is a cacophony of terror. I'm pretty sure we've already had this exact same disagreement at least once before though. Shtup is a pretty nice mod though, you were involved with that?

Freeze frame high five!

So with the Wii U out and the Wii mostly behind us, how does everybody feel about six years of the Nintendo Wii? What were the disappointments and successes? which games stood out?

Definitely a massive Wind Waker vibe from those shots, looks gorgeous. Ok, going off topic here, but hold on a second, are you sure about that? I played both a significant amount, and I don't recall UT2k3 and UT2k4 feeling any different from eachother. I remember the issue more being that UT2k3 was missing a lot of fan favorite gametypes and lacking anything particularly new in their place. The main things UT2k4 did was bring back assault, add onslaught, and cram in a ton more maps for everything else.

I've been hearing that the PS3 version might have some framerate problems? Though it also seems like there might be more people playing on that version. I think it's pretty damn fun. Not a flawless game by any stretch, but i think it's going to be something that maintains a crowd. There's going to be people for whom the things it does right vastly outweigh the things it does wrong. (Assuming nobody figures out any way to significantly break it, i don't expect to see any post-release support for this one.)

Holy shit, that is... Wow, how did that happen? How did that idea get through enough people to be revealed to the public?

How is Deus Ex: Human Revolution "kiiinda" cyberpunk? It is all the way cyberpunk, it is practically the definition of cyberpunk. I quite liked the Syndicate reboot, though the awesome co-op multiplayer was very crashy. I think Binary Domain actually has a slight cyberpunk vibe. (It's as if you were the shooty military guy at the periphery of a cyberpunk setting.)