miffy495

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Everything posted by miffy495

  1. The great Valve re-play

    Finally finished Episode 2. Halfway through replaying this my computer went kablooey and I had to reinstall windows, so that put a bit of a damper on my momentum. All done the HL series now (as much as the ending of Ep 2 makes that statement infuriating) and am moving on to Portal 1 and 2. HL2E2 is still the best Half Life overall, in my opinion, but also feels kind of hamstrung by how much more scripted it is than the others. In every other Half Life game, when you can't move on your own it's for a brief period at the beginning and a brief period at the end. This time it happens far more often. Also, in previous games when you couldn't jump around like an ass, you could still control what you are looking at. Here it locks your camera control as well. Ok, so I accept that you can't move around all the time, but I should at least be able to move my neck. A minor thing, but given how much else E2 gets perfectly right, it feels like a step backward for the series and is frustrating. Also, that final battle against the striders and hunters was much easier this time than last when I realized that I could just run the fucking hunters over with my car. I can't believe that didn't occur to me the first time through the game.
  2. Recently completed video games

    Over the past three days, I've finished two games. The first was Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, on a gamecube as emulated by my Wii. The second was Half Life 2 Episode 2, which brings my replay of the Half Life series to a close and means that I'm now onto the Portal replay. I'l put my HL2E2 thoughts in the Valve replay thread (Hint: nothing that groundbreaking will be said by me), but as there's no Paper Mario thread I'll talk about that here. So, The Thousand Year Door. For years this had sat on my desk as one of those "I have a save file right before the final boss. I swear I'll beat it one of these days" games. Over the past few months, I've been playing it on and off when I have some time to kill at home. The basic idea was that I wanted to replay all of the Paper Mario games (after replaying the N64 one in February) before the 3DS one comes out later this year. It's still incredibly good. I love that series so much. Turns out that my save file was actually further from the end than I thought it was. It was right before the final chapter, not the final boss. Took me about 4 more hours from that point to finish the game. The main complaint that I've come away with is something that seems endemic to the JRPG genre. That is, if you're going to have a huge, multi-part final boss fight, you really shouldn't put a 20 minute unskipable cutscene before it. I had to do that boss fight twice to finish it (losing by 3 HP the first time! 3!!!) and going through that scene a second time was fucking awful. Still, a great game, and if you have the means to play it I would highly recommend doing so.
  3. (IGN.com)

    Hey, I beat inFamous twice. Loved it all the way through. If the sequel keeps it up, I guess I'll be spending "twice that."
  4. Given how much I liked that one that you guys released, I'd still be curious to hear them. The talk was mostly up to the cut of the "canon" stuff, it was just a bit racier on the joke side. Even then, not a whole lot more.
  5. Obligatory comical YouTube thread

    I was actually just introduced to these guys last week with their Candy BBQ. It was the grossest thing. Then I saw their mother's day episode. I am not clicking on any more of their things.
  6. Exactly this. I took one look at that format, said "fuck that shit" and haven't been to their site since. It makes a good excuse to ignore them.
  7. My laptop started failing to start Windows over and over on Wednesday night. Going into my Bios settings, turns out that my hard drive had somehow forgotten it was partitioned. Given that I couldn't even start safe mode or look at anything OTHER than my bios settings, I just gave up after an hour or so and reinstalled Windows. Sucks, and now I have to re-download a lot of shit and find the drive that I backed up a bunch of stuff onto (still in a box from moving), but at least it's running again.
  8. Space Marine

    I enjoyed it a lot, and the Wii one as well. I'm not sure why exactly, though. Despite some of the vehicles being incredibly lame to get around in, there were enough super cool things to keep me interested, and the light tone helped it stand out enough from the pack for me to remember the series very fondly.
  9. Space Marine

    Oh man, Relic's Battalion Wars? I'd totally play that. Now slightly more interested in Space Marine as a potential forerunner.
  10. I found my old PC disc of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 about a week ago while digging through some old boxes that I'd moved house with me 5 months back. On a whim, I installed it on my laptop to see if it would run. Last time I'd tried it was with my Vista-based desktop and it didn't run past the main menu. This time on my Windows 7 laptop it works great. Man, that is still a really good game. Makes me sad to see the latest iterations being what they are.
  11. BioShock Infinite

    If that song is not playing over the end credits for that game now, I will be incredibly disappointed.
  12. Picross 3D

    As someone who cleared every single puzzle in that game, it may seem odd for me to say this, but here goes: THERE WAS A FUCKING QUICKSAVE????? :(
  13. The great Valve re-play

    Yeah, I played They Hunger, but the most time I spent with Half Life was honestly just me and a few friends in the 9th and 10th grade playing the multiplayer maps from Opposing Force over and over forever. Never really got into the mod scene too much. About halfway through Episode 2 now. After all the times that HL2 and E1 kicked my ass and made me feel desperate for the next health pack, I'm finding Episode 2 surprisingly easy. It feels like, compared to the other games at least, they took more of a cue from contemporary (read: easier, hand hold-ier) shooters. I'm also spending waaaay more time just watching a scripted thing. That's not to say that HL2 and E1 aren't super scripted, but I'm not allowed to jump around during them in E2 where I could in the others. So far, between watching and I think I've been taken out of having (at the very least) camera control more times in E2 than I remember happening the entire way through the other Half Life games leading up to this. It's weird to play them in such quick succession like this where things like that really stand out to me.
  14. General Video Game Deals Thread

    I found Conviction to be frustrating, stupid, overly-restrictive, and bland. Just about everything I don't want from a stealth action game. That said, Chaos Theory is the shit, so buy that.
  15. The great Valve re-play

    I remember playing Minerva back when it came out, and kinda want to limit myself to just this one mod (Actually, I didn't intend to have any mods, but was reminded of this one a couple of weeks ago and this seemed like as appropriate a time as any to get on it) so I don't think I'll be trying another. That said, I decided to boot it up before Episode 2 as I honestly feel a little bit actioned out and wanted to give myself a puzzle break. I'm on chapter 4 (of I believe 6) now and like it quite a bit. It can be a bit infuriating at times though. For example, there was one puzzle where I had to work my way up a flooded maintenance room by breaking pipes to raise the water level and swim to the top. However, you get to this room through a tunnel that has a broken ladder at the start of it. You can pick up this ladder, so I swam with it all the way to the room and spent ridiculous amounts of time trying to lean the ladder just so in order to climb up to the top of the room. The really irritating thing was that the ladder was actually big enough, but it just wouldn't work. Eventually I got fed up and threw the ladder across the room, accidentally hitting a pipe with it and flooding the room. Damn it. There was another thing where I had to guide a replacement fuse through a maze with the gravity gun, avoiding the walls at all cost. Took me fucking forever. That said, it's a really fun game and feel like the closest we may ever get to an adventure game in the HL2 universe. EDIT: Just beat Research and Development. That was pretty sweet, particularly in concept. The final battle between was rad as hell, but the thing controlled like crap. Also, it was really weird the few times it took you into third person. That said, everyone even a little interested in this game should play it up to the point where you power up the gravity gun. That was badass. All told, good times were had. On to Episode 2!
  16. The great Valve re-play

    It's a mod for Episode 2 that came out in mid-late 2009 to a really fantastic reception. I've been meaning to play it for forever and this is my excuse to do so. As for the ammo thing, specifically the overwatch rifle and shotgun, I've found that everything about those guns makes sure that I only use them when I'm backed into a corner. For example, at the escort section at the end of Episode 1, I chose to use exclusively the rocket launcher and crowbar because there was a crate of rockets there. I probably should have used an actual gun, but was way too worried about ammo. Also, something that I've noticed is that on Easy, 3 rockets is enough to bring down both a gunship and a strider. On Normal, the Gunships take 5 and the striders 6, so you can't actually carry enough to kill even one. That makes it bloody terrifying when they show up, and the horror of seeing one makes it so much more effective. I too have talked HL2 to death over the years, but playing it on Normal instead of Easy has definitely provided me with a lot to think about.
  17. Recently completed video games

    Half Life 2 Episode 1 is now done, throw another single player Half Life universe game on the pile. That's 5 down, 3 to go (and one mod). Thoughts in the Valve replay thread. Makin progress, yeah!
  18. The great Valve re-play

    Double post. I should probably stop updating here if people have stopped caring. For now though, I'm done Episode 1. Took me two solid nights of on-and-off play during slow periods at work, with the final train yard fight against the strider tonight as the capper. I played HL2 and both episodes on Easy back when they first came out, with my current mindset of challenges being fun and not irritating being a relatively recent (last 2 or 3 years) development. Playing games on Normal or above was a New Years resolution in 2009 that I found to greatly enhance my enjoyment of games, and I have to say that following that trend it is a hell of a lot more interesting playing them on Normal. The memory that I recounted earlier in the thread of Half Life 2 feeling much less balanced for health and armour allocation than Half Life 1 I will now declare to be bullshit. I've almost always been immensely relieved to see health or armour, and needing every scrap I came across. At the same time, it's been rare that I've actually died during combat (although god DAMN did I die a bunch during that run from the Strider to the rocket case at the end of Episode 1). It's really great. I'm very excited for Episode 2 now, which I will probably be starting on Friday night. Then come Research and Development, Portal, and Portal 2. I'm amazed that I've made it this far, frankly. I figured I'd lose steam somewhere around Opposing Force to be honest. Ongoing discussion in this thread has certainly helped keep me going, but also these games are living up to my memories and I don't want to stop enjoying them yet. Good times.
  19. Portal 2

    I know they do players guides, but having never bought one I have no idea how they work. It certainly would be a cool way to get a magazine. They could just patch it with a new issue if you subscribe.
  20. Xbox Live / Windows Live

    I have to say that if you're going to get stuck with an arbitrarily assigned name, SqualidCougar is a pretty great one.
  21. Movie/TV recommendations

    I just stayed after hours at work and gave myself a private screening of "Rubber", a movie I'd been wanting to see for a bit that we happened to have in the booth for a festival. It's about a living tyre that has the ability to explode people's heads. Anything else would be a potential spoiler for this gloriously weird movie. I was shaking with laughter most of the way through. Weirdest thing I've seen in a while, and highly recommended.
  22. I'm posting this before Patters can link this and say it's for me: X6CXSTBaUsk Fuck you, Patters.
  23. Portal 2

    Me too, soon as I saw that. Looking forward to leafing through it when I have some down time tomorrow.
  24. Movie/TV recommendations

    It totally depends on the movie. Over the top gore and things like that don't bother me, it's the psychological stuff. None of the killings in Chainsaw Massacre bothered me, for example, it was the scene at dinner with the old man. Gory and slasher movies are fine, but actual horror horror gets to me.
  25. Movie/TV recommendations

    Motherfucking Ravenholm. I'm also terrible at horror movies. My girlfriend loves them unfortunately. I watched the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre with her a few months back (I'd never seen it, I know my limits) and could barely sleep that night. I still get made fun of for it, but whatever.