syntheticgerbil

It felt like we were the only ones on the internet who celebrated it. Then eventually everyone came around.

Oh yeah, so I checked my foreign carts again in the 3DS, and I was wrong, Sno. They both work correctly. It took a few times of pushing them in and out to make them recognized by the 3DS menu, so I think the issue was that I tried only once before and figured that they didn't work. I think my cartridge slot is just dirty since I constantly walk around with my 3DS without a game inside.

Alright, so finally got to this and man I kind of hate this game in so many ways. It's to the point where I feel a bit cheated after spending so much time with previous Metal Gear games. This will be spoiler ridden, so I'll try my best to hide essential points. I know the gaming public says the abundance of cutscenes that have too many pauses and boring parts is the biggest problem, but in a way, it's almost the least of the game's problems. The content of many of the cutscenes alone is much more concerning. My biggest issue is just the rampant and ridiculous sexism in this game that is so out of place when lined up with the previous games. Now that the term "male gaze" has been thrown about all year, I don't think I've ever seen so many out of place instances in one game. Yeah I know you find Meryl in her underwear if you want in MGS1 and you track her down by watching how her hips move, but that's all par for the course for me. It wasn't played up as more than what a typical dude like Solid Snake would be thinking (in my eyes I suppose), nor was it lingering. I'd say the same with the sexy lady posters and magazines that appear throughout the series, which is part of soldier culture anyway (it's usually more easter egg type anyway with non-sexy ladies when viewing). The most so far that I have played approaching the raunchiness of MGS4 is in the Acid series where you could unlock videos of Japanese models posing, which I found despicable but didn't ruin too much of an otherwise great game series as it was all optional hidden stuff. Did MGS2 have anything like this? I can't specifically remember. MGS3 had a bunch of stuff with Eva and using FPV on her boobs, but to me that made perfect sense because it was within the motives of her character to seduce, plus she ended up genuinely liking Big Boss so her attitude somewhat changed. Sniper Wolf was similarly in character as well in my opinion. Then there is the contrast that has always been played up with Otacon and his ease of falling in love with the first sexy woman who pays him any attention (this is still played up in MGS4, which is cool) versus how Snake/Big Boss doesn't focus on women attempting to seduce him, at least not without a fight. There have always female characters in MGS, but they have had a good variety in how they are portrayed. In MGS4, everyone except for Meryl are portrayed as eye candy for no reason. The camera shots looking straight up butts and peering down cleavage are just overwhelming. Why does Mei Ling have scenes like this? Naomi suddenly has her breasts completely out when she used to be protrayed as more reserved. How they even stay in her shirt make no sense. Also, why is she hanging out with a young girl with her tits out? I think if I had a teacher, aunt, or mother hanging out with me as a child with her boobs out, I'd feel embarrassed and confused. It all just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Then the Beauties. First, the skin tight uniforms where you can see almost everything, enough said. Second, the cameras are all over their intimate bits constantly the second they are out of their shell. Third, there's easter eggs with each of them that involve tons of orgasming sounds and super provocative posing for the camera. Okay the latter part is something that's optional, even though I don't like that it exists, but twice I triggered orgasm land on accident as you get to them by simply running away. The fact that this all has happened to the sex objects just put in front of us just adds another layer of disgust. I dreaded getting to all of those bosses every single time. Every time I beat one I took a break from playing. I don't think I've ever played something so embarrassing in front of my girlfriend. Just fuck. Gameplay is just a mess of ideas without any kind of flow. I don't even know where to begin. The first two acts involve minor amounts of the sneaking and tranqing I love Metal Gear for, while the rest is of the time is spent taking out infinite spawning enemies to the point of extreme annoyance. Gun shots play non stop and there's a bunch of rebel soldiers you are supposed to help that you can't even identify as rebels half the time. If you disguise as a rebel soldier but get close enough to a PMC, an alert status instantly plays and suddenly tons of reinforcements are sent after you and you die as they all gang up on you. That doesn't even make any fucking sense if I'm supposed to be just another one of the 12 dudes standing around attacking them. Act 3 has a similar disguise part that also makes no sense yet on the flip side it is extremely easy. Even though there's a curfew enacted where you can be terminated on site, if you just don't look like Snake, somehow no guards care you are walking around at night. Stupid tiny bots in the hundreds exist in Act 4 that involve no sneaking strategy whatsoever. Whatever. I guess these complaints can seem like nitpicks, but that is the majority of the gameplay right there. I don't know if there's anything else that I'm mad at the game about. There are major parts I really do enjoy, but they are just taken from games before, not improved upon. The only new thing that was awesome was Octocamo. The more open areas in Act 2 that had patrolling guards as well as the tracking section was fun, but straight out of MGS3. There was a lot of storyline parts that stuck out and I enjoyed, especially all of the trouble with Snake's aging Plus Drebin and his monkey were great every time they appeared. I liked the part Sunny's played a lot and Raiden was I just really wish the bad parts weren't *so* bad this time. Just ugh. Also OCD commands me to slog through 7 more playthroughs for trophies. I'm guessing I'll stretch that out the rest of the year.

There's a second Tingle (not counting Balloon Fight) that's never been released in English anywhere and it makes me sad.

Plus the regular Wii boots up Gamecube as normal, the only issue being that you just can't exit out nicely with the Wiimote with the home button.

I meant to double check last night, but I forgot. Will get back to you Sno.

Well usually it varies (at least on better animes), just completely depending on the animation budget. Someone might want to do a whole sequence on 1s and then another sequence is 5 seconds of panning to make up for the lost production time. When done well, I find Japanese cartoons to be really clever. You cited Dead Leaves which I think has one of the craziest most awesome animation budgeting I've ever seen. It all feels like stylistic decisions switching sometimes from constant 1s to choppy kinectic to Speed Racer form to comedic effect. I actually recently lucked out and finally found the hard to find animation book Japan likes to release as companions with the individual keyframes for all full animated sequences. Also a lot of old theatrical Warner Bros. shorts tended to steer towards 2s for many animations while Disney always steered towards 1s (and still does). I think a staple of 2s with 1s for fast scenes always looks better, but I think I'm kind of in a minority of that opinion. Too much flailing and weirdness in 1s for slower actions that happens in everything Disney for my taste.

Are you sure though? I have both Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, UK version, and Tingle's Balloon fight, a Japan only release, and neither will even show up as a cartridge I can play on the 3DS menu. However they are fine when playing on my old DS.

There's no way to play another region game on a 3DS or DSi. The non internet enabled models will do a cartridge from any region just fine. I still keep my old fat grey DS around just for a couple of games. 999 is just a normal DS game, does your friend only own a 3DS? Also is buying games from another region considered piracy? I mean, I often have to buy something used when importing because the easiest way to do that would be using Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.co.jp in my case, but they block all software sales to other countries, which is completely idiotic, especially in cases like PS3 being region free as a feature. PC games having this restriction is even more idiotic. So I can't even give my money directly to certain companies and instead use UK Ebay to get around it. Why does this restriction exist for video games when I can easily import DVDs and Blu-rays from Amazons for other countries just fine?

A lot of television made animation stopped doing 24 fps about a decade ago as the switch to digital was made. the 6 ghosted frames upon conversion to NTSC to can easily be avoided by skipping straight to 30fps instead, this allows for easy home video consumption DVD consumption and doesn't hurt traditional animation in any way in terms of looking unreal like your article suggests. I certainly never do anything in 24 fps, I'm of the mind unless I'm doing something for film, which I probably never will, for any kind of digital consumption it's incredibly outdated. I actually get pissed that Flash or 3D programs still default my starting fps as 24. You'd also might be surprised how much has been done digitally with ink and paint since about the mid 90s, so a lot of animated shows don't actually have infinite fidelity even if the pencils were scanned first. Many times they have been digitally colored and rendered at 720x480 (or 576 if you're a European production). There are some movie productions that have been done in Toonboom with clean vector lines (Anastasia is a big one), but that's basically if you are only doing traditional cel coloring and requires much more time and effort to cleanly trace your pencil lines with nice bevel curved vectors. Where can I find that Brad Muir live stream? I'm curious to know how they achieved that exactly. My hunch is just animating as usual in 3D and converting the best individual inbetweens to keyframes and doubling or tripling them up against the next key.

Did anyone in the United States EVER own an Amiga growing up? It feels like took me forever to even understand what one was growing up, as I had assumed it was a game console for a long time.

Sitting around in utter disappointment.

I don't feel like a walkthrough is required for either of the original Metal Gear games. Metal Gear 2 didn't come with the tap codes that were in the manual and it's possible they came with maps in Japan(the NES game had a map in the box), but you can just map yourself as you mostly likely would have done back then. I remember drawing maps for numerous adventure games as well as the original Zelda.

I don't even know where to view birthday updates on the forums now.

Yeah haha, the old one. One time I was reading these forums and my girlfriend saw your avatar, asking, "What's with that creepy guy?"

Baaaaaaaaacked! Good luck Whole Hog team!

Castrop, can you explain your serial killer avatar now?

I think they are my favorite Sierra games. I was going to recommend them but I remember a lot of deaths or sticky parts in the first two and 3 will probably just hurt the eyes now, so I didn't feel like I could recommend anything fullheartedly.

You need to stop buying games, Tanu, then you can take advantage of the Humble Bundles.

I'd just dodge any Sierra adventure if you aren't already accustomed to the play style. I don't think any of them age well.

Why's he lie to us so much? I really want the series to be over too, let's get some more adventure games from Kojima or something.

If this turns into a once a month thing and it takes a few hours to do in each colossus, there's no way I'm going to be able to follow this schedule. I'm just going to go ahead of everyone at that point. I think two weeks is more reasonable, can't some of you just commit a weekend afternoon or something to a section? Killer 7 was tough because the game was really intense for me and at times frustrating, a very taxing game per chapter. If Shadow of the Colossus is anything like ICO, it's probably going to be hard to put down. (Also my first time playing.)

Yes it's in the PSN store for $20, ICO is separate.

Thank you TP! Can I get real monies from this if I ask someone to send it via Paypal or do you just trade for Steam games?

I've read on a the ps3trophies.org forums the HD version is a bit harder to control in some areas, but that could all be changing perceptions. No clue if something got messed with. Either way that's how I'll be playing. I used to have the PAL version of Shadow of the Colossus for PS2 but I never got around to playing it. I thought there were no differences outside of an