ThunderPeel2001

Phaedrus' Street Crew
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    8780

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by ThunderPeel2001

  2. Posted

    Playing this game with the subtitles turned on how revealed how many lines are completely lost due to weird bugs. I spent ages listening to Quentin's and Pheobe's conversation in the main lodge while they practice (enjoyable, too) but there were lines that were cut short that were printed in full in the subtitles.

    It's well worth turning them, IMO.

  4. Posted

    It's simply because they love Psychonauts (and disagree with you).

    You're right though, it doesn't bring that same warm, fuzzy feeling that going back to something like Melee Island or Rubacava brings.

    Yep, you summed it up. This is definitely what I'm feeling. It's missing the warm, fuzzy feeling that really, the game needed. I also didn't find the character's lines all that funny. I'm sorry, but they're just not.

    Compare. These are pretty much both the first conversations you hear in Monkey Island and Psychonauts:

    You approach a crusty, impressive looking pirate. He notices you and says...

    "Ahoy there stranger. New in town?"

    You reply, "My name's Guybrush Threepwood. I'm new in town."

    "Guybrush Threepwood?" (his face cracks) "Ha ha ha!! That's the stupidest name I've ever heard!"

    "Well, what's YOUR name?"

    (his face falls) "My name is Mancomb Seepgood."

    you wander across two kids having an argument:

    Phoebe: Ugh. That has got to be the worst band name I have ever heard, in the history of ever, of all time, ever.

    Quentin: And by "worst" did you possibly mean "the best"? Because that's what I was thinking.

    P: No I meant the worst. As in I can't believe we're friends it's so bad.

    Q: Look deeply into your heart, Pheobe, and I think you'll find that even you believe that "The Levitators" is pretty much the dopest name a band could ever have.

    P: The Levitators? Are we some sort of covers band that only plays graduation ceremonies for motivational seminars?

    Q: I've been practising and I think I could levitate us both during our gigs. For real now.

    P: No way, last year you dropped me and I broke my drums.

    Q: Hey, at least those got fixed. I'll never get back those records you melted with that unplanned pyrotechnics display of yours.

    P: Look, you know when I have a good solo going, sometimes things get hot. I can't help it. And it seemed like part of the show if we named the band the right thing...

    Q: Oh, not this again...

    P: Ahem. Ladies and gentlemen!

    Q: Please...

    P: Would you please welcome...

    Q: No...

    P: THE FIRESTARTERS

    Q: Aw, man...

    R: (crowd noise)

    Q: If we're going to call it that we might as well call it "Burning Itch".

    R: What? (makes angry noises)

    (weird sparks - burning the insects close-by?)

    Q: Hey, how's everybody tonight? You feelin' Itchy? I said, YOU FEELIN' ITCHY?

    P: Watch it Quentin.

    Q: Or what, you'll burn me? You know you can't burn me. You got a block. That's why we're friends.

    P: Aw, you're right.

    Q: That's why we're in a band together.

    P: Yeah...

    Q: And why we should call our band The Levitators.

    P: Did you say Heavy Taters? Cuz that's what I heard.

    Q: Levitators!

    P: Firestarters!

    Saying all this, I'm playing it again and really enjoying it... with the subtitles on (which is allowing me to appreciate the dialogue better as some of the jokes are lost - like "ass-tral projection" etc.)

  5. Posted

    I made it up to about level 34ish, and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about this game. I seem to alternate between loving the game (when I *am* in the zone) and hating it (when I have no idea what's going on). All I know is that I really dislike the enemies that attach to the web and shoot to either side, although I guess that's to force the player to use the jump pods more strategically. I had to look online to find out that they couldn't be killed unless they're moving horizontally. Weird.

    Really? So they're baddies who get to the top? They can only be killed when they're moving....?

  6. Posted

    Ok, I installed Psychonauts last night because of this thread! I gave it a quick go before I went to bed and............. (maybe it's time to burn me as a heretic) ........aside from the groovy opening video, and the cool set up, I have to say I've just been reminded that it's not an immediately gripping game. It's actually not that much fun to explore the camp... Sure, there's plenty to interact with, and there's some funny lines from the characters, but it doesn't necessarily feel like the nice warm and friendly place it wants to. I know it gets better, I know it's a brilliant game, but I've just been reminded of the beginning feeling.

    The characters are a little strange, too. Their dialogue isn't really as amusing as it thinks it, either. The two kids arguing about what to name their band is actually more character driven than humorous, which given the fact that their characters are never really explored or expanded upon, seems odd. The same goes for most of the other kids, too. And the kid who's "practising" spying on the girls, well, it's just a bit odd considering how young everyone comes across. And that's when you go around "punching" people just to hear their reaction.... Hmmmm.

    Please don't kill me.

  7. Posted

    I guess after what happened with System Shock and then again with System Shock 2, the journalists were going ape to try and knock people out of their complacency. It works against people like me, though, that were always going to buy Bioshock because of the earlier two games.

    Still, I'm very glad it appears to have been a financial success.

    Also, I actually like the open endedness of the skill system. I don't want to get on a level filled with security only to find that I've equipped myself as a fighter too much and really struggle because of a poor GUESS. Much more enjoyable if you ask me the way they designed it this time around, but definitely less RPGish.

  8. Posted

    Please, merciful gods of the Thumb, is there not some way we can remove anything within a spoiler tag from turning up in email notifications?!!

    I've just inadvertently ruined the ending of the game now, by reading toblix's comment in the latest thread email I received...

    It doesn't spoil all that much, thankfully. Also, do you know about the XBox360 cache thing? Apparently there's not a problem with the last patch, it's just old cache data conflicting with the new patch... Just empty the cache by holding L+R bumpers while booting or something.

  9. Posted

    Still, the cutscenes remain a total joy to watch, and in all honesty the 'purr' thing hasn't bothered me since I switched to primarily using speakers instead of headphones. I just play in 4:3 instead and have black bars down the sides, because there's no way I'm having stretched cutscenes. :tmeh:

    Damn, it's a shame about those cutscenes not being widescreen. I've just bought a new widescreen monitor :( Stretching them sounds awful!

    I don't know about the audiovisual sync, I guess you could be right, but with games like Sam & Max doing their cut scenes so well, it makes you wonder if it really would have been a problem.

    Also, considering this game is on FIVE discs, why were the videos compressed so much? I seem to remember them being soft and with some visual artifacts to boot.

    I'm a bit bummed out hearing about the widescreen issue though :(

  10. Posted

    I was just thinking of installing it again yesterday. It's funny how even discussing the worst bits of the game still manage to make me feel nostalgic for it.

    One thing that I don't get, why on earth didn't they just use the ingame engine for the cutscenes? It would have made the install about fifth the size and they didn't use any higher quality models or any special effects that the engine couldn't do in the videos. It would have also made them look better as there wouldn't have been any compression artifacts.

  11. Posted

    First, this isn't your typical wussy hold-my-hand-through-half-the-game game. It's *hard*. It goes back to "the old days" where arcade games were genuinely difficult. If you want to get into this game, you're going to have to dedicate some time to it.

    Next, and this is an issue that has been brought up many times, is that well yeah, it is a bloody "visual clusterfuck". Minter himself doesn't disagree. But the idea is that you shouldn't be watching with your eyes ... you should be watching with your senses. I know that sounds like a bunch of wank, but everything has a cue. Everything. I've been playing Tempest2K a lot lately, and even then, Minter stuck a video/audio cue in for every little event.

    So you need to have all your senses "active" and ready. SG should be playing like Rez should in this sense (alone, dark room, loud speakers, etc). Watch/listen out for cues and remember them, map them in your head. Soon you should be able to know what's happening on the board unconsciously. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but it's true.

    All this comes down to "give it some more time". Play some of the early levels again. Try to get a higher score. Get a better feel for the cues, and for the mechanics. Speaking of which, do you understand all that bulling/powerzone stuff? (the tutorial I watched wasn't very clear).

    Basically, it just might take a while for it to click with you. A friend of mine who has been a Minter fan since the 80s got SG and didn't really like it. A couple of days later, it just clicked with him. It might be the same case for you. Or not. Who knows? All I know is, give it a bit more time and dedication, and you just might end up loving it.

    SiN

    This is a brilliant post that I just skipped (for some reason), first time around. Wow, thanks for pointing all that stuff out, I feel like it's my duty to try and like SG now! I had no idea that the "visual clusterfuck" was part of the intellectual design for the game. That's actually really interesting.

    I don't understand the Powerzone/Bulling stuff that you mention, as I found the tutorial to be needlessly confusing. Could you explain it? Here's my basic understanding: The "powerzone" is the thing that falls further away (into the distance) when you kill the baddies? And you can "bull" them off the top of the grid if you've got powerzone by bashing into them sideways? And this is how you get higher points for a level?

    I'll try the tutorial again when I get home.

  17. Posted

    I'm also unsure. I was surprised that Consolevania started to rave about it. It was nice to hear that the chaos of the game actually leads into something you can play. From the tutorial alone I my eyes were hurting, plus I had no idea what it was talking about. I still don't fully understand how to play it!

    I preferred Tempest 2000, I think. Still... I WANT to like Space Giraffe, so I'll probably keep plugging away at it so I can start making out the sense from the chaos.

  18. Posted

    Have to disagree. While I know what you mean that the dialogue wasn't at immediately interesting as say, Pulp Fiction, but it wasn't shit. It also wasn't shit because it "failed" at being a 70's exploitation movie. That was just the starting point of the movie, it changes after that.

    It's deceptively simple, too.

  19. Posted

    Finished it!!! You can't spoil anything for me anymore!! Yay!!! No need to avoid threads with BioShock in the title any more. I can surf where I like! :tup:

    HUGE SPOILER BELOW!!!

    The real twist was halfway through, but it was a confusing one. It looked like he had the code, but of course, I realised later that he didn't know it to begin with. Interesting use of it when he figured it out, though!

    Overall a great game. I harvested everyone LS and got the presumably the "good" ending. Wouldn't mind checking out the other one, though. Not sure if I could face going back and doing it all again, although I suppose now I've listened to everyone note and explored every location --- except Sander Cohen's hidden room... how do you open that door? --- I could probably just burn through the missions.

    I kind of felt that the "art" level, while very nicely designed, was one bad guy too many. I could have done with some more plot first.

    When it comes down to it, BioShock is almost identical to System Shock 2, except it looks like it actually sold a few copies! It's also better designed. The actual gameplay mechanics are vastly improved from SS2, it's a LOT more balanced and you can easily upgrade your character any way you sit fit without removing or sacrificing other skills. In SS2, if you specialised in using your "Psychic" abilities (Plasmids), you'd suck as soon as you ran out of "psychic power" and get creamed repeatedly for having poor gun/weapon skills. Same goes for hacking. In SS2 you could specialise in that to a detriment to other skills, too. In Bioshock they kept it really open ended.

    Not sure who it was that complained about the regen booths. They're the same as in SS2, except you had to "use" them for them to update, otherwise you'd be sent back to the last one you "used". The two games are SO similar in many ways.

    There was maybe one thing that SS2 did better though, and that's ACCENTS! There were some very dodgy attempts at accents in Bioshock... Not sure how hard it must be to actually find an actor from Germany or England or Australia or whatever. I've also never met a German who actually said "schnell" when they wanted you to do something quicker. Still, minor points.

    Bioshock was absolutely stunning to look at. Not just in graphical detail but in sheer design. SS2 suffered from badly designed levels and repetitive space corridors, but Bioshock simply *shines* in its beauty.

    I'm surprised there wasn't a little epilogue of someone going down into Rapture... Bioshock 2! Also, for such an incredibly cinematic game, I could have used to nice looking credits with a stirring score instead of just being returned to the main menu :)

  24. Posted

    It's weird, I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore gamer by any means, but I never found Psychonauts too hard, even in the Meat Circus (although it was the most difficult). I don't recall ever dying over and over (except in the Meat Circus), especially on the Velvetopia level... Wonder what I did differently? I'm NOT a "good" gamer.

    One thing that could have been improved was the collecting of the arrow heads. It took forever to get enough just to buy something which was pretty much essential if you wanted to enjoy the game: The magnet thing that draws everything closer to you.