toblix

What the fuck is this shit? I remember Arkham Asylum making me feel like a bad-ass bat man flying around beating up thugs. Apparently this time I'm a clumsy, inept bat man who has no business trying to move from perch to perch or get into trouble. First of all, what is this, X-Wing? I'm doing these AR training mission where I have to glide, then dive and then pull back and fly right above ground into a tight corridor. I've tried it fifty times and either I can't reach the first circle because apparently Batman leaps off ledges with a random amount of momentum, or because I can't pull back at the exact right millisecond and with the exact right vertical and lateral force to propel me not too much to the left, right or up so as to hit the wall, or down, so as to hit the ground. Do I get some bat-thing later on that makes this not impossible, or have they added these ridiculous things just to satisfy masochist gamers? Also, what is this, Street Fighter? Did the first game really have so many different combat combos? Do I have to learn them all? I like beating up dudes, but sometimes a combo thing pops up and I try to do what it says, but Batman only swirls around and gets beaten up, making me feel like a failure. God damn it.

All you people needing iTunes because of your iPods, pads and phones – have you checked if iCloud can't replace iTunes completely?

Jake "Halloween" Jake.

October 30th Never Forget Or is it the 29th there still? Oh, and thanks for doing the thing! I haven't really been active at all, but some cool stuff has definitely been built.

Game: FINISHED I've probably never been as happy about being done with a game. Looking back, it was fun, and there were some really great set pieces and sequences, but the whole time I was bracing myself for some long, impossible, frustrating fight, which added a dumb layer of stress. Had I only known I would probably have enjoyed it more.

I was conned into purchasing this game by a sweaty southerner.

Holy shit, you apparently only need one marching robot to sound like a robot invasion!

Did it have "Deal with it" glasses being lowered onto the map every thirty seconds?

I think the driving in GTA IV was terrific. I remember thinking it was really uncomfortable the first time I played it, but I got used to it really quickly and still think it's the best-feeling arcade driving thing I've played. In games like Driver you sort of want other cars to bounce off you and not slow you down as much. I like that in GTA IV the driving feels like it's working fully inside the premise of the larger physical simulation, which gives it, as others have mentioned, more weight – more realness. You can still speed down highway, dodging oncoming traffic, but it feels really dangerous. One thing I would maybe like to see in GTA V is even more realistic accident dynamics – being hurt by impact and maybe thrown out. It could quickly become annoying, but it would also add a lot more danger to reckless driving.

FUCKYES

Just to confirm that I still hate everything, I thought Super 8 was a huge disappointment. There was some great acting, particuarly by the younger actors/actresses, parts of it looked really nice, but the plot, the story... come on!

This space reserved for hilarious meta-meta-meta post.

Hey, that sounds like a really good idea for a tr–

I really like the look of it, and it seems fun, but also like one of those merciless indie games. How forgiving is it with players who have little patience for replaying stuff?

Just finished Act 1, and what a slog it was! One frustrating sequence after the other until the very end. So far it's been very epic and very actiony, but I think I had to retry most parts five or ten times before barely getting through. The simple combat parts are fine, but inevitable it ends with some semi-scripted sequence where you have to dodge a number of things coming at you, or kill something hurry quick before it destroys the whatever, or you have five seconds to spot a mortar guy in the middle of a battlefield and kill him. I'm quite content with my perseverance, though. Now I'm down in some caves. Hopefully one filled with less bosses and more grunts...

What. Well, that figures, I guess. I always felt like the game didn't tell me everything properly. Don't tell me, the reloading thing was in Gears 1 as well?

This game looks good, but the giant men are ridiculous. Also, the weird and unpredictable switching from bro style ("shit yeah bro more ammo nice!") to touchy-feely ("remember the honor of our fallen comrades") feels awkward. As I said, the game looks really good. I don't know/remember how old it is, and how it looks/looked compared to other games, but it looks really solid even by today's standards. One problem I'm having is discerning my bros from the enemy. Everyone are grey, huge men with guns, and I've more than once been killed by someone I thought to be my friend. Also, this game is pretty hard. I guess I shouldn't be complaining, having chosen "hardcore" as my difficulty, but for some reason I assumed it was the normal setting, and the other one said something about "casual" which felt embarrassing.

It's this thread! Coming directly from Gears 1 (via a few hours of Fourza) I just played the first parts of Gears 2, and reading Miffy's glowing review makes me even more excited by it. A lot of changes were immediately obvious: Better, smoother graphics. Gears 1 had lots of choppiness in cut-scenes, while Gears 2 looks better more smoothly. Technical improvements, I guess. Movement feels a bit snappier – might be me imagining things again, but I definitely feel like less of a truck. More interesting collectibles! There's a sniper mode where you can zoom in and shoot off heads! A seemingly greater attention to story. Sure, it's probably not going to be a fantastic story, but hopefully it'll be something to balance out the pacing and the hard-core broness of the first game.

Finished it the other day. Really impressed overall – the pacing and variety of fights was great, and the weapons felt really good. There were a few spots where the checkpoints were placed before some drawn-out section followed by a hard part, which lead to some frustration, but not enough to make me quit forever, as it turns out. The boss fights were great, except for the last one which I could only win by managing to get the guy stuck on a corner (video games). I wish I'd played these as they came out, so I'd get more of a breather between games. One question: I kept using the gun that the enemies used – it fired three rounds in a burst. It felt like it did more damage than the chainsaw gun, but thinking back, it might've been imagining it. Have I been?

Actually, the troll designs are mostly based on Theodor Kittelsen's troll illustrations.

NO DON'T QUOTE THE LINKS!!!!

Nice!