miffy495

We have 4 here in Calgary as well, although one is a purely independant entertainment rag (Called FFWD) which is actually alright and only comes out on Thursdays. Helps to keep me abreast of upcoming band shows and such. Otherwise, the C-Train is perpetually fouled up by discarded copies of free throwaway editions of the bigger newspapers that they think we won't notice are the same thing because they call it something different and have more advertisements. One of ours is named Metro as well and is puke-green and way too flashy, can't be buggered to remember the other two. One of them is a nauseating orange colour, the other just looks like someone printed it in their basement.

Ok, so moving down the list: That list seems to be mostly populated by porn of the disturbingly hardcore variety. (Creme de la Face 44: Creme Rinse is an especially evocative title) or titles that I'm pretty sure had the ban lifted. For example, Day of the Dead is on there, but just a couple of months ago I bought a DVD copy of it from a Canadian HMV. As such, I'm really not sure how much of the list applies. The thing about the R rating is due to an international standards thing. In Canada, we call what Americans use R to describe 18A. Getting an 18A rating in Canada is getting an R rating in the states. We don't have NC17. What you call NC17, we call R. As a movie theater manager, I can say for sure that if there's a minor in a Canadian R rated movie, with adult supervision or not, the theater will be fined several thousand dollars if the kid is caught. The fact that my theater is an art house and is one of the two in the city that will show an R rated movie means that I'm always very conscious of this fact. As for the aspirations of Manhunt, I assume it'll have the same merits as the first. This being that it plays like a horror game from the other side of the coin. While disturbing and not especially "fun" to play, this really did give it a unique feel that still stands out for me. Having Brian Cox order me to kill in brutal ways was plenty fucked up and a very memorable gameplay experience.

Mario Strikers Charged over here. Just drop "Football" to avoid confusion and let the game release. And as someone who used to play both Soccer and Basketball, hell no. If anything, Mario Strikers is like if someone had made a mod for a hockey game that removed sticks and put in some bob-ombs. Still, I could never stand the Fifa or Winning Eleven series and long ago decided that soccer is a game that's fun to play but dull as hell when simulated. Hockey on the other hand still grabs me in sims, I think that's why Mario Strikers is a series I loved instantly. One last thing, before the Wii friend thread gets clogged, There is already a thread for this game here. This is really starting to go crazy off-topic.

Has an AO rating here in North America too, if sources are to be believed. Not as big a deal, mind, but it means that essentially only specialty stores will bother to stock it and the big Wal Mart/Zellers/HBC/etc won't be selling the game. Now, I already liked the first Manhunt and wasn't sure if they'd be able to successfully recreate the utter feeling that the first game gave me. I've got to say, after all this BBFC/ESRB shit, I'm more into the game than I would've been. Well done to the orchestrators of this marketing ploy. (It'd be nice to not be so cynical, but fuck it. I agree with Rock Elf. Something about this really does feel planned)

From what I saw on the leaderboards, your times were already under an hour. Well done. Level 5 is still handing me my ass every time I boot up. The cutscenes haven't really gotten to me yet, but then I've only seen 3. I went back and replayed levels 1 and 2 to try and get a bit better feel for the early combat and in doing so brought my time to around 15 minutes. I guess I'll just keep at it until I get the rhythm.

Hey, at least I have a job too. I know far too many students who do fuck all for the summer months. I take spring courses and work. I think I deserve at least a little credit for not being a complete slacker.

That and they (probably rightly) think that a lot less people care about soccer/football over here. Still, with the Under-18 World Cup going on around now, you'd think they'd want to capitalize. Ridiculously arcade-y or not, it's still got the basic idea.

True enough, but as of Monday my spring course ends and I have a few months of not a whole lot to do until September's term. My job keeps me going, mind, but it's not something I ever need to think about when I get home. A week from now, my gaming time shoots from "a few hours a week" to "whenever the hell I feel like it" for almost three whole months.

...and it's happened. Out in September on 360, so I'll probably pick up Legend sometime in August, play through it, and then download Anniversary as it comes out. Episodic = awesome. Cheers to Eidos and MS for making it reality.

So earlier this week to celebrate the fact that I've finally cleared the credit card balance from the Christmas and post-Christmas birthday rush (seriously, I don't think there's a single member of my family that does not have a birthday from December through February...) I went out and bought Super Paper Mario. Granted, it's not The Thousand Year Door or the brilliant N64 original, but damn if this doesn't make the Wii worth playing again after a couple of months of nothing but VC titles. If nothing else, I've put almost 15 hours into it over the last three days and am about to face the final boss, so that's gotta say something for the quality. First off, the graphics, as always for this series, are perfect. Not stunning so much as charming. I honestly wish they'd keep this look for any Mario game that does not demand full 3D. If the DS hardware can handle upgraded N64 graphics, why not a new Paper Mario for it? Partners in Time was great, but isometric stuff always throws me a bit. Next RPG in paper style please, Ninty. Next, the gameplay is very fun. The 3D is a bit underused, honestly. The 2D look is brilliant whereas the 3D never really seems to have much going on when it isn't essential for a puzzle. Still, some of the stuff is ingenius, so I'm impressed enough with the success of the experiment. More use of 3D in the next would be nice, or at least spruce it up a bit. The pixls are good to have around and add quite a bit to the gameplay. Navigating through them in the menu is far less cumbersome than I imagined when I heard that you'd have to go into a menu screen to switch between them. Tippi, your always-there pixl, is like Navi but without the annoying speech samples. Floats around behind you and if you point the Wiimote at the screen she'll tell you about whatever you're pointing at just like Navi would with Z targeting. The only problem is that you have the option to play as Peach, Bowser, or Luigi as well. This is a great option, but the only impetus to use them except in very specific circumstances is that you really want to. I played through almost everything with Mario, only using Peach when I needed to float, Bowser when I needed fire, etc. It felt like a waste having all these characters and no reason to use anyone but Mario. Oh well, that's it for me. Really dug this game and will probably have the final boss beaten in a couple of hours. Anyone else given it a shot yet?

Still not out in North America... (God I want to play that game)

The next Asterix movie? There's a fucking Asterix movie? Potentially a series? Wha?

I finally fucking beat level 4! Hooray! Damn, Fayk, good on you for figuring out the fight system so effectively, but for me this is Ninja Gaiden hard. Kicking. My. Ass. Over and over. My main problem comes when I parry an enemy and they get a second hit before I have time to parry that new one. Pretty quickly, I'm dead. It seems at the moment like whether or not I win a fight is down to luck. Getting through several fights in a row without being sent back to the checkpoint is miraculous. Doing so and then not falling to my death in some way is like the second coming happening during Rob Schneider's best actor acceptance speech. Any tips on the parrying so that I may eke out a win more often?

If that's the case, I hope they'd let me tweak the sensitivity. I don't want to be really getting into the game and accidentally smash when I don't mean to, or dodge-roll (another tap manouver) myself off a ledge. Conversely, I'd hate to have to actually smack the person sitting next to me to smash their character. The thing is, if you don't have a GCN pad, this is the method that gives you full rumble. If it doesn't go off well, players who are new to Nintendo will be missing out on that extra bit of involvement.

I'm also going to side with toblix on this one. I love an RPG when it's done well, but I've never been able to enjoy one done in the first person. Couldn't even take Oblivion for more than a couple of hours. This is due to a combination of things, not the least of which is the forced shallowness of the tactics. It pretty much forces you to become a tank because you can't see behind you or (unless you have a massive multi-monitor display) on your peripherals and need to be able to absorb a ton of damage from those directions while trying to fight something else. Not until a game in can successfully simulate peripheral vision do I think it'll be suitable for true first person tactics. Otherwise I'm looking straight ahead at my enemies and where I would otherwise see their buddies rushing up to attack me I can only see my speakers and maybe a can of coke. Doesn't really seem to allow for the choices that the character would actually have, does it? Another big issue for me is that noone has yet been able to make first person melee combat feel satisfying to me. For a genre that should really allow you the choice between what type of weapon you want to use, allowing a pick between melee and ranged is a pretty basic thing. Yet every first person RPG I've played has guided you unconsciously over to ranged because the melee weapons have such dicey hit/miss distances and never really feel like they carry any weight. I like to at least experiment with melee weapons in RPGs, and will usually gravitate to a character with a mid-length blade/sword/sci-fi universe x's equivalent. They have a certain elegance to them that I enjoy. No first person RPG has ever made this a viable choice up to this point. (I've been meaning to play Condemned lately as I've heard it does melee admirably. Still, not an RPG, so beside the point.) If Fallout 3 can allow me to pick up a pipe out of a pile of rubble early in the game and make using it as a weapon feel right then it'll have a better chance of being as good as I hope. Still, Bethesda's track record doesn't give me a whole lot of encouragement to think it will be. Hitting things with a sword in Oblivion felt like beating a pinata with spaghetti. And even then having the pinata not react for another two seconds after you hit it. (Me: slashslashslash! Goblin: *pause* OW! *pause* OW! *checks watch* DIE!) Hmmm... that turned out more rant-y than I'd hoped. You get the idea. First person RPG != fulfilling to me. I'm willing to give Fallout 3 the chance to change my mind, but I'm doubtful it will.

You can do the switch around. I've done it a few times myself. By accident, mind, but it happened. I'm really not sure how I did it each time that I did. Maybe the timing has been made more precise now or something. All I know is that I've seen it first hand, so go for it. (I believe it was also shown in .)

Not quite. Each direction had two moves you could do. You could press the stick to the side slowly/gently with A for a regular attack or tap it quickly while pressing A for a smash. I'm not sure how a digital d-pad would be able to deal with that compared to an analogue stick.

Thunderpeel: The original isn't unlockable. They were apparently hoping to get it in there, but the game was made before MS upped the Arcade size limit from 50MB, so there simply wasn't room to include it as well. Pity, but there it is.

Is Van Damme still alive?

Hmmm... I really hope it does come to 360 as DLC for Legend, as rumoured. If so, it'd not only give me a chance to play it on a console (platformers on PC just don't feel right to me) but also more of an excuse to pick up Legend. I'd been thinking about it, but have yet to be able to justify the price. If I get Legend and access to the Anniversary DLC, I'm sold.

That or a masochist. Honestly, with an avatar picture like that, it would make some sense.

But... but... deformable landscape as a weapon! Yeah, it's a bit over the top. I'm always particularly struck most by how paranoid everyone seems to be about China. Still, there are a few games out there in which the corporate western overlords get to be the enemy. Red Faction did this interestingly up until for some reason a crazy geneticist turned out to be behind everything. Or something. Honestly, by that point in the game I'd kinda tuned out and was just going through the motions until I saw credits. See also: corrupt lawmen in Crimson Skies, pretty much any police officer with a speaking role in the GTA series (San Andreas in particular), and Metal Gear's conspiracies on top of conspiracies. The "one honest guy mixed up in an amazingly corrupt system" is a standard plot device that allows you to fight back against too-powerful Western figures. For games that look at Western society (the bits we don't already think of as corrupt) as it is now though, I'm inclined to agree.

There's one checkpoint in the middle of a level. If you die before the checkpoint, you go back to the beginning of the level with the timer where it was when you died. If you die after, you can choose to do this as well, or you can restart at the checkpoint with the timer still running. Seems like a fair tradeoff to me. Although I'm tempted to go back and restart the game now as I'm three levels in and only have 40 minutes left before Farah (or did she even have a name back in the day?) chooses death.

Well, maybe I'm just horrible at it. I honestly wouldn't rule it out at this point. I should really dig up my copy of Sands of Time though. Anyone know if it's compatible, or is it just Two Thrones that works on the 360?

C'mon, toblix. You've been holding out on us for a while. Let loose! I enjoy my job, but lately it's gotten a bit hectic, and going to school at the same time has been sucking out all of my free time. For example, this is the first time in a week I've had time to come on the thumb and see what's happened. New subforum? WTF? I've still been getting in a bit of Guitar Hero, and as I have tomorrow off I downloaded Prince Of Persia Classic earlier tonight, but after tomorrow I'm swamped again until next Thursday. Jobs suck, school sucks, combining the two really sucks. (I like my job and I like what I'm studying, but you know what I mean.)