Roderick

You probably meant the artstyle of the monsters and backgrounds etc, because the character designs, that also pop up during dialogues, are fucking horrible compared to earlier games. Apart from that, I am in complete agreement. ALso, I didn't know about the hidden combination attack! I always just used a big, slow sword and smashed everything. I loved having to measure in the small delay in attacking and your weapon actually landing a blow. I have to say I am a pretty conservative Castlevania player: I always just stick with one weapon type (usually the biggest sword or axe) and get the strongest in its line. Related, in Portrait of Ruin I thought the whips were quite disappointing and I hardly ever used them. They were weak, all of them.

Also, there are like 50.000 Cubes versus 1.5 Death Stars. Am I the only one who's utterly uninterested in an Olympics game? Just because Mario and Sonic are in it doesn't mean I'm immediately interested. Would be different if it were a platform game. But then I never liked the style of the Sonic platformers, so this news does next to nothing with me. Crossovers are a dime a dozen. Their fight was a decade ago. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner.

Wow, great deal. I wonder when shops start dropping around deals like that here. It seems like they've mutually cooperated in not doing anything special with consoles, ever. I guess because most of the shops are all owned by a single mother retail company

The one thing that I loved about Dawn of Sorrow was its soul system, where every monster you meet has a soul you can collect. More souls of the same type equal more powerful attacks. And you can even fuse the souls to create awesome weapons! To me, the 'depth' of the game lies in all those systems that are stacked on top of each other. Of course, if you don't care about that kind of item-collection and just play it as a platformgame, you'll have a different experience.

Are you speaking without irony? Then you lack imagination! A platformer can be just as deep or shallow as any genre. Admittedly, Harmony of Dissonance is the weakest of the three GBA Castlevanias, but not horrible by any means. If you're not liking it, then you just don't like the genre. Aria of Sorrow is, however, a classic, and yes, deep, game.

The time limit isn't really the problem (you get a song that slows it down to about half, which is all you'll need for the dungeons and whatnot). But the general difficulty is... It's worth it to replay it and at least get past the first stages to see what the wonderful world has to offer.

Ah, so it was long ago. If I recall, you have to speak to the mask salesman and then find the entrance to the watchtower via a secret route hidden by kids walking around town. The hints given are pretty obvious if you talk to them.

I noticed today there was a big article in the current SFX on Battlestar Galactica. Also, my roommate is hooked on it. Instead of doing any schoolwork, he's watching the series non-stop.

Is that the tiny first quest where you have to do some stuff in Clock Town? That shouldn't be frustrating, indeed! I don't recall having that many problems with it, actually. Which begs the question: what are you doing wrong?

With gorgeous music.

With courtesy from Marek; my previous post: It's a bit of an impossible question, because there are so many sides to gaming. That said, I'm pretty excited, with all the wonderful games coming out this year for the Wii and 360 and the new consoles that are gaining momentum. If I look at the horizon and see the likes of Super Paper Mario, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Galaxy, Corruption and all the others coming... I see an awesome mix of creativity, craftsmanship and simply good entertainment. The only thing complaining it my wallet.

Hey, what's going on here? Yufster and I had already replied to this topic. I'm not writing my stuff again

It's a bit of an impossible question, because there are so many sides to gaming. That said, I'm pretty excited, with all the wonderful games coming out this year for the Wii and 360 and the new consoles that are gaining momentum. If I look at the horizon and see the likes of Super Paper Mario, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Galaxy, Corruption and all the others coming... I see an awesome mix of creativity, craftsmanship and simply good entertainment. The only thing complaining it my wallet.

Majora is a strange, wonderful and frustrating experience. From one point, especially in the first few hours when you're just exploring Clockwork town, it is absolutely wonderful. My god, I wish they would have just made a game based around character interaction. But from another point it also feels more disjointed than Ocarina, like it's a remix but like, weird. The atmosphere is absolutely delicious though, with that ominous threat constantly looming over you. At times genuinely scary. But -I've said it before- it has some punishing moments that I just couldn't get through. Some of the bosses are exceedingly difficult and they destroyed the game for me; I was eventually bested and I never touched it since. That was very painful, as it's an extremely creative, loveable and scary game. If only they could have made it just a smidgeon easier and taken the edge off the frustration. But alas!

I just realised that acronymbased names that are not spoofs are horrible. What does S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stand for?

Good science fiction has strong philosophical elements; hard to capture in an interactive environment. Not impossible, mind. But the two Dune franchises so far focussed on the vanilla events instead of the deeper meaning. I mean, God Emperor of Dune blew my mind, and Chapterhouse: Dune is basically a manifesto against bureaucracy: Frank Herbert's own little The Republic.

There should just be a button that immediately skips me to the end of the game victoriously.

The trend on sci-fi is applauseworthy, because it indeed kicks the living shit out of urban realism or WW2 settings. Finally we'll see an uprising of, you know, creativity again, instead of emulation of what we already have. I know this is terribly one-sided as a view, but for the purposes of my point there they stand. A black 360 is a horrible, horrible idea. I've been ranting against it ever since I heard it, or heard people lamenting that they wanted it. So I'll say it again: black is 'last gen'. This generation, we are proud of our gaming consoles and we want them to be seen. No more black, but refreshing whites and broken whites or chills or whatever you name them. But a return to black is a return to indulging gothic fanboys who want a 'cool' console to put next to their Cradle of Filth array of posters. It's a bad idea, designwise (though not so commercially, since there are lots of weird people who would rather want an unseen monolith to hide somewhere in the shadows than have a slickly designed console perceptible with the naked eye). However, an upgraded 360 hardwarewise is of course really nice. The price is shocking though: 475 Dollars? That will translate to roughly the same amount here, which, I'll just say it, is the price I'm not going to pay for a console. It nears the PS3 in laughing-out-loud-ridiculousness and is a step back. As far as I'm concerned, they should have adhered to the cap they set with the Premium version. Now they're shooting themselves in the foot because they're actually closing the gap between it and their main competitor, in favour of the latter. Bad move. Microsoft can take another beating, so lower the price or suffer mediocre sales.

Utterly derailing this topic: I borrowed my roommate my DVD boxes of Farscape. He wanted to see the show wince I was such a fan of it. I expected him to love it, but he has real troubles getting through the first season. Now, he's no sci-fi nut, so it's a tough sell in any case, but now that I view the show (at least the first season) through the eyes of someone who doesn't like it, I notice that it does have its weird, almost tacky elements. Maldus, anyone? Now I can heartily laugh whenever Farscape goes berserk and does some outrageous and cheesy stuff, but for my roommate it's sheer torture. I guess I just have a weakness for villains in leather.

Still, awesome gunfight while the Terminator is holding a coffin.

I believe the game is at least as hard as Prime though, with an end boss that is equally punishing. Ergo; a setup for disappointment.

I just heard in a few days I get to review Wario: Master of Disguise, which is cool. I'm curious towards that title; how all the disguises are going to play out during gameplay.

I recently saw it, and was nicely amused. Not on the same par as 2 of course, but not throwaway at all. I've never seen predator though. So I'm always a bit meh when he shows up.

The platforming techniques were exactly half of my point. On this subject; whether you like it or not, you have to admit that the game was constantly trying to reimagine itself, having different takes on the gameplay for every level. New techniques and ideas were unloaded before the game ever ran the risk of becoming boring. I, too, see nothing really wrong with the platforming, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I consider myself an enthusiast of the genre. However, the other half of my point concerned the style of the game. Here too, Double Fine used many influences within levels, like Black Velvetopia incorporating the pokerdogs painting, Mexican wrestling and an 80s artstyle. None of these were invented by DF, and their heritage is easily seen, but in this new mix it becomes highly refreshing and something 'original'.

Agreed. It's very crippling and not constructive at all to be making something and hear people say constantly: hey, this reminds me of this and that movie/game/concept. The only thing that matters in this argument is if you're authentic: were you consciously inspired by the other ideas? If not, then it's still your genuine idea. If you are, then it's still a valid concept if it's not a basic copy, but either a remake or something that you're using in a different way, or part of the whole. Example: Psychonauts is built from the ground up from ideas and concepts that already 'exist', and cliches. It's even easy to see what comes from where. Do we not regard that game as highly creative? It doesn't matter where ideas come from or if they are already made; what matters is how you use it, the execution, your own vision and integrity. There.