lobotomy42

I believe that all Nintendo-published games on the GameCube were progressive scan. Certainly Chibi Robo! was.

I recently finished Suzanna Clarke's The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, which is set in the same universe as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It was great! Not quite as brilliant as Strange & Norrell, but often much more fun. It is kind of a shame that she hasn't written anything else yet because she has such a great style.

Okay, so I finally finished my first Normal playthrough and can comment on this. I *wholeheartedly* agree. The plotting in Diablo 2 was so much smaller in scale, but so more much effective than anything happening in Diablo 3 that it's truly confusing. Diablo 2 has an actual ending - it's a bit of a cliffhanger, and it's a downer, but it definitely resolves the fate of Marius and makes you feel like this game has actually gone somewhere. Frankly, the cliffhanger aspect even makes sense - it's a game designed to be played through over and over, so ending the game on a note that consists of "You won....BUT THE WORLD IS STILL EVIL!" fits. Diablo 3 does the exact opposite. It never resolves any of the major threads raised. There are the aforementioned Leah/Adria issues. The "endings" to my companions' plots seemed to fizzle out. Even the ending is weird: It's just so tonally all over the place. Diablo 2 very much struck a consistent "dark, gothic" feel which was at least consistent. Parts of Diablo 3 feel like Diablo 2, and then other parts -- much of Acts 3 and 4 -- seem almost to be striving for a high fantasy, Lord of the Rings-esque thing. I don't even know!

I may not have actually made the avatar until 2007 or so? I'm not sure. But I definitely haven't changed it in a long while.

I will definitely be playing this. I have plenty of gripes with ME2 and ME3, but I'm too invested in the universe at this point to let that stop me.

All I have for the 3DS is Resident Evil: Revelations, although I will say it plays fine with the CPP. Although, I think my favorite thing to do on the 3DS is take 3D photos. (Not because there aren't great games for it, just because I really like taking 3D photos.)

That was fast: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-22-mass-effect-3-extended-cut-dlc-release-date-announced

And it didn't support progressive scan, and I seem to recall that it imposed a sort of letter-boxed widescreen viewport with no option for genuine widescreen support. :-/

:tup: :tup: :tup: :tup:

I think this is basically accurate. They want the same game from last year, but with BETTER GRAPHICS and MORE SHIT ADDED. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with knowing what you like and wanting more of it, but it sure as hell is depressing for the rest of us. (Although this might be hypocritical of me -- I'm pretty excited for "more Pikmin.")

The GameCube "era" was one of Nintendo's most creative periods, in my opinion. During its run, Nintendo released: Luigi's Mansion Pikmin (1 & 2) Eternal Darkness Custom Robo Chibi Robo! Odama Battalion Wars Baten Kaitos (and Origins) Geist Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat (not to be confused with Donkey Konga) Metroid Prime 1 & 2 Zelda: Wind Waker and Zelda: Four Swords Adventures Super Mario Sunshine WarioWare (both the GBA and GCN versions) Many of these were completely new franchises, of varying originality. And the GameCube iterations of existing franchises (Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Star Fox Adventures) were significant departures for their respective franchises. And yet, the GCN and its games got much maligned by gamers themselves, and as a result, a lot of these excellent titles -- like Pikmin -- got almost completely ignored. I hope Pikmin 3 proves to be a greater success.

Well that makes this the first kickstarter pledge I'm starting to regret.

Lisa Franked is a great way to describe it: this is definitely one of the best things about the game.

Yeah, I also wish they had done a little more with the high school stuff. I liked the way most of the bosses were high school outcasts (goths, punks, hippies) -- but then some were simply random (Vikings?) I was hoping they'd go more for a sort of an inverted Revenge of the Nerds type deal, but then it seems like at some point they decided they were doing a series of musical genre references and huge gross-out bosses. I slightly disagree with Sno's take -- I think, if anything, it was disappointed it was so similar to NMH. Falling back on "some wacky Video game culture references" seemed as precisely out-of-place here as it seemed in-place in NMH. It's consistently fun, but it does feel sometimes like they were really close to something great and just missed.

Thanks. I got through the mini-game okay - it was the one that was sort of like a frogger / shmup combo? The last "video game" in the video game level. But I eventually made it through and finished the game. (On Easy, but whatever, it counts!) I liked this quite a lot. It may be the first non-adventure game I've taken home and beaten in essentially one sitting. The cast really help sells it - Juliet, in particular, could easily be screwed up, but Tara Strong really nailed the line between casually badass and cheesecakey naive. The gameplay mostly works, too, although I can never get combos off correctly in these types of games (fighting games, too, come to think of it) and as a result it was probably more difficult than intended. But the upgrades came at a nice enough pace to keep me from getting bored in between the awesome setpieces. (And what is a Suda51 game without setpieces? Not much.) In tone and gameplay it seemed highly reminiscent of No More Heroes. The final boss in particular seemed to be a variation on the NMH2 final boss. (But I guess there's only so many options for huge final bosses in the world, anyway?) Also, geeze, San Romero High School? I just now got that!

This game is serving to be a reminder of how bad I am at action games. I'm playing on easy and still getting my ass kicked. (And those insta-death arcade sequences are particularly gruesome.)

To be clear: I'm reacting only to the marketing for the game for so far. It's perfectly possible that the game itself is handling a "vulnerable" Lara in a reasonable way, and there's nothing inherently wrong with "vulnerability." (Although, as per Rodi's gender-swapped quote earlier, if a male protagonist were marketed as "vulnerable" it would probably be laughable.) We'll see. But the comments being made by at least some of the employees at CD boil down to: "She's beaten up, degraded, weak, and boy doesn't that make her sexy in a whole new way!" If they want to make a survival horror game out of Lara Croft, I can't begrudge them that, but trying to sell it back to us as "sexy" is downright creepy, rape scene or not. Also this.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-13-lara-croft-attempted-rape-will-make-tomb-raider-players-want-to-protect-her Emphasis mine.

Mine doesn't have this! Where did you pre-order from?

I agree. This is why I mostly stick to single-player. As soon as other people enter the game, I feel competitive and start optimizing numbers, and it loses the fun.

They need to maintain a $1k per hour pace for the next 24 hours, which they've been doing so far. I'm holding out another 12 hours before I up my pledge, but I think they'll make it. (The pace tends to accelerate in the final hours as all the holdouts up their pledges.)

THERE IS NO ESCAPE

The pace has definitely improved dramatically in the last few days. It'll be close, but I think they'll still make it. With regards to DF Kickstarter vs Sierra: Doublefine had the advantages of being first, having an established company/brand, and Tim Schafer being a well-loved personality among a certain class of gamers generally, as opposed to just among adventure gamers. The Sierra designers were never as well known, and all ended up competing with each other for the crumbs left behind in the wake of DF. Also, a lot of other kickstarters have updated their reward tiers, not just the Sierra ones. I think it's a natural consequence of people thinking of the projects as purchases/pre-orders, rather than getting thousands of people to say "Damn the man! I'm giving to Tim Schafer to give my finger to traditional publishers!" People want EXACTLY THIS but NOT THAT THING, etc. I agree that the Space Quest one has been particularly spammy (although as I recall, the LSL kickstarter was also pretty spammy.) But they're also putting out a lot of content among that spam to demonstrate what they can do - the demos, and the surprisingly-interesting developer commentaries.

Just one day left. If you want to get in, now's your chance.

Haven't listened to the commentaries yet. But I want to!