Sno

Are you sure those aren't actually newer DSi carts with the embedded region information? (Original DS carts have the NTR prefix on the serial number, DSi carts have a... I think it's a TWL prefix?) What you're saying makes sense if they're DSi carts, and the older hardware is simply ignoring the extra region information. Otherwise i've been misinformed, or else the 3DS is doing something funky.

Hold on, hold on. DS games are not region locked, and they will not magically become region locked on a 3DS or DSi. I believe that there are, however, some DS games with DSi-specific functionality that may enable region locks on the newer systems. Old-school DS carts won't run into any issues though, regardless of the platform. 3DS games, however, will always be region-locked. I think that's how it all shakes out, at least. The save bug apparently affects all versions of VLR, the issue is just that the 3DS version has only one save slot, so you're totally hosed if you're hit by it. Just don't save during puzzle rooms and you're fine. There's actually only a few rooms in the game that are even affected by the bug, and even fewer that will fault every time, but it's a nasty bug. My first playthrough on VLR, i made a save in one of the most seriously affected puzzle rooms without knowing about the bug, saw the game lock up, and then saw my save refusing to load. Did reading online, found out about the bug, and started the game over. The second time through, i avoided saving in the puzzle rooms and played through to 100% completion. (If you need to save while you're in a puzzle room, you can use the story flow chart to back out of the puzzle room and safely save during a preceding visual novel sequence.) So it's a really, really bad issue, but it's easy to avoid when you know about it. It's such a great game that i would still encourage people to play it, but it's very important that people be aware of the issue.

http://www.giantbomb...hunter/17-6838/ Here is the Brazen stream, though he doesn't go into any real depth on the animation style, there's just a few general comments about it. I do hope they find a publisher for that game, a more accessible Monster Hunter would not be a bad thing. I had some friends drag me into playing Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii. Once it actually gets going, it can be a totally incredible experience, but there's so much bullshit about that series that makes it aggressively inaccessible. I mean, most of the games in that series still don't have any online play, and ones that do, like Tri, are extremely primitive online. It's also just an absolutely gruelling grind. There's definitely something to slowly gathering supplies and building your tools and gear and putting all that stuff on the line and being so totally invested in a high risk hunt, but it took me ten hours to get there, ten hours before i was ready for my first real monster hunt when playing Tri. You know, but you get to that point and it all totally clicks, how deliberate and planned every action has to be, different people in different rolls dealing different kinds of damage to different parts of the monster, while the monster cycles through impressively complex behavior patterns. (Leading you on a chase through a massive environment, signalling other monsters to come an interfere with the battles, becoming more aggressive as the fight goes on, and ultimately trying to limp away and hide to recover its health.) Just huge fifty minute ordeals with players needing to be incredibly organized into different offensive and support roles, making sure you mark the monster to track it across the map, laying out traps, burning through supplies for buffs and restores. When it clicks, it's the most amazing thing, but everything around that is just so primitive and so much of a grind. Monster Hunter is incredible, I fucking hate Monster Hunter, I can't wait to play Monster Hunter 4. For how much of an ordeal it is, there is definitely room for something like that experience that is a little more accessible, and definitely room for something with a more modern design sensibility. There is fertile ground there, and i hope Brazen happens. (Hey, and maybe the competition would push Capcom in the right direction on that series.) Honestly though, now that i'm on board with Monster Hunter, i'll probably be the guy decrying Brazen as a dumbed down impostor.

Actually, hold on just a second. I'm reading that VLR does have a european release, it came out at the end of november, so you're good with a european 3DS. It's just 999 that was never released in Europe.

There's no region locking on DS games, so it'll be fine. 3DS games are another matter, so hope and wish for a domestic release of Virtue's Last Reward.

PC version is 2012, so i say it gets a pass.

Does Radiant Silvergun actually have any significant slowdown? I don't remember there being anything particularly noticeable in the versions of the game i've seen/played.

Homeworld 2 was a pretty solid multiplayer game, but i thought it had a terrible campaign. The first game was a totally triumphant debut for Relic though, definitely a favorite of mine. (Relic didn't make it, but i also thought Cataclysm was a fine game. Guys behind that are Rockstar Vancouver now.) Anyways, the first few Elder Scrolls games definitely don't get enough love: Also, how about the pre-Jeremy Soule .

THREAD NECROMANCY. I just received this as a Christmas gift and i've got maybe about six hours in on it right now. I had never bought it for myself because i had been a little apprehensive about playing Skyward Sword, i guess. It looks like i have in this thread already bitched about the last few Zelda games, so i won't repeat myself at length, but Twilight Princess was a game that had left me with a sour taste because of its clunky, unreliable, and unecessary motion control. (I still regret not having played the GC version instead.) I'm pretty pleased to be having a mostly positive experience with Skyward Sword. 1 - I feel like Skyward Sword is a design that actually benefits from being played with the Wii-remote. 2 - It feels like a really mature and intelligent implementation of that controller. For example, i've noticed that the game uses certain predictable player actions to constantly and quietly recalibrate the Wii-remote, theoretically getting around one of the main problems with the Wii-motion plus tech. (That it constantly loses track of itself.) I'm feeling like it is a game that shows Nintendo finally coming to grips with the Wii-remote and delivering on some of the original promises that were made of the Wii, so it's kind of unfortunate that it came too late in the system's lifespan to really mean anything. I'm finding the control pretty responsive and reliable, i'm enjoying the dynamics of the combat, and i'm finding that it holds up pretty well even with Skyward Sword possibly being one of the more demanding Zelda games. (Hits taking a full heart, and the whole thing about the game emphasizing parries because normal blocks wear on your shield. I know the shield thing is one of the more controversial aspects of the game, but it's the kind of sadistic player-unfriendly thing i really enjoy.) I hope these things hold up for the duration of the game, because right now, they're feeling pretty promising and awesome. The way it's even incorporated detection of simple details like how you're holding the sword as actual game mechanics for determning how the enemies will try to block attacks, that shit is pretty cool. (Things i am reading in this thread are worrying me.) It's a beautiful game too, i love the painterly looking distance blur going on. However, while I understand that it's apparently one of the longer Zelda games, it feels small with the frequent load screens breaking the world up into such small chunks. The overworld area is clearly meant to evoke Wind Waker, but it not only seems to be a much smaller space, loading into and out of the main town destroys any intended effect. Also, people definitely weren't wrong about that game having a glacially paced opening. I'm not exceedingly bothered by that though, you just have to be in the right mindset for games like that, don't play them on a deadline. Also, is anybody aware of where in the game the game-breaking save bug can occur? I know there's a utility on the WiiShop to unbrick affected saves, but i feel like i should probably still be aware of causes it. Also, this game's Zelda is adorable.

Like i said, a lot of modern shmups are specifically designed to produce slowdown. When Atlus "fixed" the slowdown in Deathsmiles for the US version, Cave's response was to go in and spend months patching it back in. The game was meant to slow down when a ton of bullets were on screen to facilitate weaving through elaborate patterns.

I don't think it always makes a game harder to play.

I haven't played Ni No Kuni, but it's interesting to compare the PS3 game to the DS game, the latter of which features a blend of 2D and 3D art. I think the DS game is absolutely beautiful, while the PS3 game looks... Yeah. (I don't think we got the DS game in the west though, did we?)

I echo this statement in its entirety.

Merry Christmas, internet dudes/dudettes. Edit: TOS will forever be my favorite Trek, with DS9 as a close second. ^ I enjoy how non sequitur this seems because of the page break.

It's not clear how much involvement he has with the game at this point, because while he is still contracted to finish that game, he also does not work there anymore.

Slowdown has a weird place in the Video game vocabulary. You know? Like how Shmups often emulate it on purpose for its gameplay and stylistic effects. Sometimes it feels right that the game is struggling with whatever totally insane thing it is showing you. Alternatively, maybe the shitty framerate also gives it a bit of a stop-motion vibe, which is totally fitting for SotC and its subject matter. (When Brad Muir was showing off the prototype for Brazen on that GiantBomb live stream, he talked about them going to great lengths to produce animation that was stuttery and shitty in just the right way to emulate that Ray Harryhausen kind of look.) But yeah, i look at the HD version of SotC and see the game running at a stable, smooth framerate and i feel like it almost loses something. Edit: I just looked at your link, apparently we have similar thoughts on this.

The last word we had on it was both that Fumito Ueda was leaving the studio, and that insurmountable technical problems apparently necessitated SCE Santa Monica being brought on board to help finish the game. (I recall reading that large parts of the game were being remade essentially from scratch.) Needless to say, the game seems to be in a good degree of trouble.

What about Last Guardian?

Maybe it's a case of the game being more suited to one platform over the other. It was designed for the DS, which has that sleep mode you can engage at any time and a pretty guaranteed battery life of ten to twenty hours based on the brightness. (You know, and no other functions competing for the device's time.) You're really beating yourself over the head with this tutorial though. Edit: Out of curiosity, i loaded the game up on my DS. It took me about ten minutes to go through the tutorial, so i don't agree about that. Still, it definitely doesn't actually let you save during that first junkyard level, i don't know if i had ever noticed that before.

When i loaded up the game for a few minutes to mess around, it struck me how much autonomy Agro has. The two most immediate things were that Agro won't run across stone and will steer you away from ledges, i had totally forgotten about those behaviors. You really kind of have to fight with the horse a bit to traverse some locations in the environment.

So did you just see the sluggish tutorial and immediately bail? You got the wrong idea about the game, you need to give it another chance, it's unquestionably worth it. I'd count Ghost Trick among the very, very best DS games. It's such a triumphantly charming and clever little game.

Can i just say that i think the answer is yes? So many games even today are utterly reliant on people sharing knowledge about the game. (Dark Souls, for example.) I would prefer that games do a better job of making themselves accessible, but i don't think the absence of that precludes something being "well-designed". Concerning older games, things are even muddier. I mean, a lot of those old games relied on peripheral materials and "feelies" that no longer exist. I believe several of the Metal Gear games actually instruct players to look at a screenshot on the back of the box to find an important communication frequency required to keep progressing through the game. Frequently things like that were just a crude form of copy protection, but they were also often meant to create a broader experience. (An experience sometimes beyond the scope of current technology.) Often it was also the same old thing of people always demanding more and more hours out of their games, for which the answer was to purposefully make them incredibly obtuse and difficult. (The equivalent response today is the multiplayer mode nobody wants and will never play.)

WayForward has definitely made some really intensely difficult games, but this is not one of them.

I just finished the Adventure Time game on the 3DS, WayForward's Zelda 2-inspired platformer. I have no real opinion one way or the other about Adventure Time as a cartoon, but i like Wayforward and i've always thought Zelda 2 was a very interesting game. So yeah, the Adventure Time game, I liked it. It's a fun, charming, lightweight little game. It's totally fine. Their dedication to emulating an old school design without emulating that old school difficulty leads to it feeling a little insubstantial, but it's obvious that a lot of care and attention went into the game.

I don't actually know anything about any other fan games, i'm just bummed that it came down to Capcom having to look to their fans to be able to celebrate one of their oldest and most important franchises.