syntheticgerbil

I was also referring to the Legacy of Kain series. Those games have a loyal following, or at least they did until time forgot they existed.

Quadruple score! EDIT: Oh geez, this thread is 7 pages long, I'm out of the thumbs loop.

This is pretty upsetting for me, especially if it's true that she, "was "forced out" by The Last of Us directors Neil Druckman and Bruce Straley" like the Joystiq article reads. Oh well, maybe she'll start another brand new series that people love.

Now that you say that, it's maybe not for sure they will be the ones doing the disc release. I'm just going by the fact that they have a page for Kill la Kill on their site.

Effervescent chip package in the open garage?! Illicit chip tastings? Man, this must be the best news station to work with ever.

Is that styrofoam? What is this madness?

I can believe in that. Also, thank you for this great evolution chart.

Wow, I'm incredibly sorry to hear that. I don't know what else to say, he was a trooper.

Whole Foods is super fucking expensive, so I don't even need to worry about their snake oils, I think it originates in Austin though. Here's the aliens meme: It mostly cracks me up because I was watching this stupid show on close captioning at a Vietnamese restaurant with my girlfriend sometime in 2009. We were just kind of making fun of how stupid the History channel had become that they are just wasting a bunch of time entertaining tons of thoughts about alien ancestors creating our civilization. But shortly in to the meal it just turned in to a weird fixation on this guy and why he spoke so strangely and why he wore a suit but didn't feel that having noncrazyperson hair was important. Didn't realize he was a (or became) a phenomenon that everyone was already laughing at. I had a very similar experience with that red headed weirdo on CSI Miami. Also I find it funny that Giorgio seems to have gradually evolved to this level of craze.

Fine, I will not hate Hiroyuki Imaishi and will watch Kill La Kill when it comes on an affordable Blu-ray set in a decade (fucking Aniplex). Also I tried starting Kaiba and I felt really disappointed in the first episode. The animation is very low frame rate for such simple drawings and the mock Tezuka characters tend to look super ugly. I guess Masaaki Yuasa needs at least one thing that disappoints me, they can't all be winners.

I will give love to Conker's Bad Fur Day. It's the only Rare game I actually like.

Yeah after I typed that last night I went through every game I owned on the list and made sure I wasn't missing out on any DLC. I think a lot of them just had some kind of multiplayer as far as I can tell, but I still feel stressed that I may have missed something. I also had to order Mario Vs. Donkey Kong Miniland something or other and Layton 4 so that all the downloadable puzzles will be waiting for me when I get to them. Sheesh, I wish Nintendo weren't doing this. I wonder why it can't be a part of the WiiU and 3DS networks.

I was hoping someone would post the, "I'm not saying it's aliens" guy. For shame. Way to not cheer me up.

Yeah, it's fine, Mario 3 just makes me mad. In general, I know you get to the end, that's the only way to construct a platformer, but I need something a bit more substantial that to just wander around a map with things pasted around with hardly any rhyme or reason. That's why I feel only the airship levels and parts of World 8 are actually engaging, because you have to move with the scrolling screen and quickly use your skills. Maybe it was misunderstood. The shortcuts are not within the levels, so there's not much to explore for. The most you can get are items to break blocks and such on the map. The items aren't normally earned in the levels themselves but instead by either completing a minigame or fighting some Hammer Bros. that roam around. Mario World encourages you to take multiple paths within the levels to open up new paths. It's a much cleaner design if you actively looking for more game to complete. It's not that collecting any of those things bothers me, it's that is pretty much all there is to Mario Bros. 3. The Mario Land games continued the slot machine/gambling end of level things through the Wario series. No issue with that.

Does this mean I can't download the Weekly Puzzles for Professor Layton anymore? Should I get on that?

Okay since I played Mario Bros. 3 hundreds of times as a kind and revisitied as a young adult (in 2007), I'm going to be the fucking jerk that shits all over Mario 3 in this thread. It's incredbily mediocre in terms of design, and I would say nearly the worst first party title in the 2D platformer Marios (Yoshi's Story exists and Mario 2 (Lost Levels) is a lot of anger and no fun). Please don't hate me, Jake. Also, I still have yet to play a New Soup game, so maybe those count as first party 2D platformers? I can't speak of the quality So the reasons Jake said Mario 3 is brilliant are the same reasons I feel like it's a mess. It's just a platformer full of open levels with no clear goal, barring than the airship levels. They have so many twists and turns that end up utterly useless. There's not much point in discovering any secret outside of having enough lives in order to not start a world over. You can search for the special suits, but there's no fucking point because you'll equip it on the next level and probably get hit within the first 30 seconds. Not even worth it. Mario 3 is just a game that meanders without any kind of solid difficulty ramp or clear goal other than to get to the end of the level ASAP. Mario 2 (USA) had secrets that were worth your while, obtaining health increases, secret keys, and shortcuts. A lot of good ideas from Mario Bros. 2 were carried over to Mario World. Mario Bros. 3 feels like one of those subpar platformers where stuff is just pasted all over a level design where you get points for collecthing random objects. It's very much closer in kin to Bubsy, Jazz Jackrabbit, and Toejam and Earl 2 than any other Mario of the 8 and 16 bit era. Also the dungeon style labyrinth levels were maybe a bit more clever, but all of that is done with more ingenuity in the haunted house levels Mario World, which kind of breaks the idea that later Marios were only left to right. I should probably touch on my thoughts as a kid, since I played the game as an adult as Mario Advance 4. I loved this game as a wee one, it was one you always pick up and play but one you could never fully see. There was no fucking save system. Why did Nintendo do this? Apparently some kids could beat this game by leaving their Nintendo on for days, but I never had this luxury. My Dad was always hiding around the corner waiting for me to abandon my NES and check if the red light was on, because don't you ever fucking waste electricity like that. I played a lot of PC games concurrently at the time and was confused why no one could really be bothered to put a save system on most NES games. It's not like Nintendo couldn't do it, you could save in Zelda, Metroid and Kid Icarus had passwords, and Wrecking Crew just allowed you select whatever god damn level because that game was bullshit. There's really no excuse for not implementing a save system on a much larger and later Mario title. Instead, you pretty much needed those obscure warp whistles everyone knew about because the only way to actually experience the game other than leaving it on forever was to just warp to different worlds as a sampler of sorts. I think most people who actually beat the game just got pissed and warped to World 8 because the trajectory of the game without a save system was just an awful mess. I think the Mario games did not start getting clever until Mario Land and on, leading even in to the genius of Wario Land. Mario Bros. 2 was good even as a reskinned game, but it is also very difficult to appreciate unless you are playing the Advance version with a save system. The only way I'd recommend Mario Bros. 3 is in it's Game Boy Advance state. Even then you should only play the game for historical purposes. The beauty of Mario Advance 4 is the World-e stuff where you scan the e-Reader cards for the add on levels. If anyone has the time and patience to do this, you can get about 40 levels of genius platforming that combines the best of Mario Bros., Mario Bros. 2, Mario Bros. 3, Mario World, and Yoshi's Island all in one package. The only problem is Nintendo released these add-on levels on a ridiculously crappy peripheral and almost no one who even owns Mario Advance 4 has even played them. If you own an e-reader, there's a way to print out all of the American and Japanese dot codes on card stock at home, but this is a lot of work and only for the nerdiest people. Plus when I did it for some, there was way too much trial and error. I think you can download a Visual Boy Advance save with all of them on it though. Hey I wrote way too much.

I'll second the notion of having more power being a good endgame. Currently I only have the Metal Gear Solid series and Metal Gear Acid games coming to mind. The former tends to be pretty obnoxious until you get used to the stealth and in turn begin to do it with ease. Although MGS 1, 2, and 4 have final boss fights that kind of throw everything you learned out the window (going for an action game sort of thing), they usually all have one open room right before the final boss that has multiple guards you have to either sneak past, take out, or both. Suddenly it's not so daunting when you get to the point. Snake Eater ends with that great fight with The Boss where you have to use a variety of your stealth manuevers to win. Acid is just turn based card game stuff, but by the end of the game you have some pretty good cards to choose from inevitably, making the game become a cakewalk but also getting to see your new and cool abilities. It's almost like every Metal Gear game initially begins with being a bastard towards you on purpose.

Yeah that's what I was trying to get at when nitpicking the credits earlier and the exit of Jonathan Chen. Really late here. I don't have much else to say.

\ God, this thing was fucking bullshit.

So today when stuffing concert tickets in an envelope for my new mind numbing job, I noticed an address for Chowchilla, California. I now suddenly understand where Chowchilla Charlie came from.

Oops, went by the wiki, it's inaccurate for Swat 4. Although if the Mobygames is to go by, I don't think he was project lead on any game besides that, and he also didn't run the company alone. He may be a founder but it would seem that Jonathan Chey did most of the big boss man running stuff also going by Mobygames. The other founder, Robert Fermier seems to have stuck with programming. And then Jonathan Chey left Irrational in 2011.

Are you saying Ken Levine was in charge of those seven titles? It appears he's only really hands on and in charge on the "Shock" series upon checking the credits.

Possibly I feel like there's no reward in doing stealth in first person view. Same with jumping in first person view. No one is ever going to do that right. No one, it's just awkward and doesn't have the same thrill as a platformer. I don't like playing games as a chore. RPG elements are just that, they are kind of in every game, so I don't know what to think of them as a major draw.

Hahaha, what is this? I don't blame Nintendo so much for that since it was developed by a third party studio.

Because of OCD, I will play a game with branching narrative multiple times, but it definitely is a chore. I had to play Walking Dead three times over because of this, but at least I was laughing the whole time when I did my silent playthrough. I'm really not a fan in general though, because I feel like gamers say they want branching narratives to feel they have an individual story crafted to who they are, but it seems like that's just something that's been said for years as a way to elevate games. Usually I've felt games with a well crafted narrative with one path tend to be my favorities. Although it is good that there are games with narrative choices and there always should be, even if though in many cases the choices seem to be tacked on because that's just what you do.