miffy495

See that's the thing. That makes sense and would probably add to the game, but it's not really anything revolutionary. To use Advance Wars again, I can get slammed by artillery without having any idea where they are. Are they concealed in the woods that I can't see unless I'm one square away? Are they behind a mountain and using infantry as a spotter? Where is that bloody artillery? Still seems like, with fog of war anyway, you can have big changes or you can have fun, not both.

Pearl it is. I enjoy messing with my EB clerk anyway. I don't really look like the type of guy you expect to see buying a pink sparkly game. The look on the dude's face when I bought Gears of War and Viva Pinata at the same time was brilliant. Unpredictable buying habits ftw!

Alright, so I get paid Friday and am getting one of the new Pokemon games. Guide my decision, Thumbs! Diamond or Pearl? What will I be playing in a few days time?

But he loves the Wii! He must be trustworthy enough to supply me with pornography!

As I recall, Nintendo's website had some "Here's a list of all the users that are currently playing Animal Crossing/Mario Kart online!" thing when the service first launched. It may still exist, I just can't be arsed to check. EDIT: I could be arsed. http://www.nintendowifi.com/gaminghub/AnimalCrossingGamingHub.jsp It's not quite as awesome as I remembered it, it's just a random group of 20 people who've logged in in the last 15 minutes in your region. Still, better than nothing. Also, weird coincidence, the guy who's at the top of my 360 Guitar Hero leaderboard is playing AC:WW right now. So says Nintendo, anyway.

If that's the case, then how is it any different from SC1? There are many maps with large areas that only flying units can reach. I'm sure Blizzard has put a lot more thought into this than me, and I'll probably still enjoy the outcome, but at the moment I can't visualize how this can be a big change without getting kinda logically dumb. Everything I can think of that would add to the experience and be fun is a bit different, but only marginally so compared to current RTSs. Also, I'm not actually asking this of you expecting an answer. I realize that my questions are starting to sound a bit like the guy who hears a new scientific discovery during a conversation and starts grilling the person who said it as if they were the one who discovered it. Just putting the concern out there. To clarify, I'm really excited about Starcraft 2 and my brain just keeps coming up with reasons that it'll be underwhelming so that my hopes aren't unrealistic for the release.

Or Diddy Kong? He's been in most other Nintendo-character orgy games. (Not that I don't love Mario Tennis, Strikers, Party, Kart, etc. Still, may as well call it for what it is) I'm playing Donkey Kong Country 2, arguably 1995's best monkeys-vs-pirate-crocodiles game, on VC right now and have started to wonder when I'll be able to kick as much ass with him in SSB as I do in Mario Tennis.

Well, if it is online, I'm betting there'll be Friend Codes. Kinda dumb, yes, but at least you're only playing with people you want to. I'm assuming for the moment that most of us on this thread are competent players, but not into the whole "Wave-dashing" thing (I've seen it done a few times, don't care for it.) and thus would have entertaining matches with each other. Likewise, I have several friends with Wiis who I already play SSBM with regularly. Online would only mean that we don't need to arrange a time and place. And to counter your "No fighting game has done online successfully" thing, do you have DoA4 on the 360? Actually quite well implemented. You can watch fights and put up a virtual quarter to call "next match" and everything.

That would actually irritate the hell out of me. Why shouldn't a ground unit be able to look up, exactly? Are they entering a room in a horror movie and want us to see the drooling monster hanging from the ceiling before they do? If there's something in the way, sure, but even Advance Wars has that covered. If the things are so high up that the ground units can't see them, and vice-versa, with multiple battles going on at multiple altitudes then fair enough. Otherwise that sounds more like and annoyance than anything else.

Damn, the last midnight show at the CIFF was some revival thing of Life of Brian. Good fun and all, but the CUFF (Underground Film Fest) has a far superior lineup of similar things. This year's highlight was The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai about a Japanese prostitute who has a bullet in her brain that lets her see the future after she stumbles upon the cloned finger of George W Bush and must safeguard it. Yeah, it's about as fucked up as it sounds and really really fun.

To an old, seemingly dead thread, I give thee life! So yeah, anyway. Just saw a press screening of Severance starring Tim McInnery and Laura Harris. If you're a fan of the really damn funny horror genre, it's fucking fantastic. Essentially a company team-building outing gets stranded in the woods and hunted by ex-soviet war criminals. There are escort girls with machine guns, a severed leg in a mini-fridge, and rocket launcher mishaps. Also, a hand to hand scene culminates with a guy actually having a knife planted in his ass, leading to one of the most undignified death scenes I've ever seen put to film. Very funny, not overly gory, some decent "BOO!" moments, and just a good time all 'round. Check it out.

Well, they were pretty clear when they announced it, but it's been dialed back on. I'd say if they're putting Strikers online they shouldn't have much difficulty putting SSB on either. 'Course, logic has never really seemed to influence Nintendo's online strategy so we'll see. Fingers crossed.

I enjoyed it, but it's got its problems. Lag on the bigger outdoor levels can get distracting, for example. I'm not sure what the standard pricing is over there, but depending on how desperate I was to play something new on my Wii, I could recommend it for anywhere from 1/2 to 3/4 the standard price.

Yeah, it's just that I always end up playing so late and I'm never sure if I'll have time to beat the boss and still get a decent amount of sleep. Then whenever I get the urge to go back and finish, it's pretty late again and I just decide (again) to sleep instead. I really should go beat Gears, Dead Rising, and Paper Mario though. Maybe that's a project for the latter half of this week.

Would it be too early to start making crazy guesses about new characters based off of the musicians' past works? 'Cause if not: GLEE! ...as it's coming to Wii anyway, it wouldn't be such a stretch, would it? Less exciting is:

Mmmm... MGS3's boss fight. I think I need to play that again now. Shagohod being all cocky as it is with "Ha ha! You haven't beaten me since last summer!" mockery. Best boss fight ever in a game, IMO, and that's just the cherry on top of all the other amazing boss fights that the Metal Gear series has produced. On the other hand, lengthy boss fights can be a bit of an issue as well. I'll often get to the save right before a boss and, in anticipation of a long and arduous battle, think to myself "Shit, it's already 3 in the morning. I'll go to bed now and beat the boss sometime soon." Then I just never do. I've got savepoints right outside the boss in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Resident Evil 4, Gears of War, and Dead Rising (ok, not so much a boss, but Overtime mode) just to name the 4 most recent examples. Every time I feel like going back and finishing the games now I worry that my skills have gotten rusty and I'll be slaughtered so I just don't bother. I'll add the game to my "Played-but-just-barely-unfinished" pile and move on to the next. If I'd thought I could take out the boss in about 15 minutes, that problem would never crop up. Super Paper Mario almost got added to this list as well, but I forced myself to take an hour out the night after making that doomed save and just beat the damn thing. Metal Gear Solid 3 as well. I went back 3 months after the doomed save just because I really wondered what the final cutscene would be like. A boss fight should be a challenge, sure, but only exceptional bosses (See: Shagohod) need something of that kind of magnitude.

Actually, I thought the boss was pretty easy...

Don't get me wrong, I'm really pumped for this one. Warcraft III was the first RTS I actually bothered to beat, and this news has me replaying Starcraft yet again. It's just that I'm trying to keep myself from getting too hyped up and, as a result, disappointed. And again, I don't think the "I hope they have more than the standard kinds of tilesets" is too unreasonable a concern.

A friend of mine who never played Deus Ex loved Invisible War. I was kinda meh about the whole thing. It's all about what you're expecting. This guy, who's entire shoter experience to that point had been Halo and Perfect Dark, was overwhelmed with all the awesome. I, who had played Deus Ex and was hoping for a proper sequel, was let down. I still enjoyed my time with it, mind. It's an above average shooter, but an unworthy successor. Don't get your expectations too high and you'll have fun.

Wow, for someone who hasn't played since Blue, that was a fucking surreal read. Well done, sir. Consider my mind blown and my face a permanent until I have a chance to get a copy on DS.

Agreed. Relic is the shit. Although I never did get around to Company of Heroes, everything else they've done has impressed me greatly. I doubt they'll ever quite get back to the genius of the original Homeworld, but they do keep on coming close.

True enough. It's been 4 years and I can still pretty vividly remember the final cutscene from the Orc campaign. Damn that was good.

I'm sure the Wii love will start to come back once the releases get going again. Meanwhile, after Super Paper Mario, I know that my Wii isn't getting much action aside from the occasional round of Elebits. Give it a couple of months. You may actually be in the better situation right now because once you've worked your way through the essential launch titles, the next wave should be hitting. Those of us who played them as they released are stuck waiting things out.

I'm just saying that more than the staple "Desert, Technological haven, Fields" tileset would be nice. Given that that's all that many games will give you, I don't think that that's too irrational a concern. Nice to hear that about the Single Player campaign though. The reason I stopped playing a lot of RTSs in the first place was that it was beginning to feel like the campaign was just a tutorial for when you got into online play.

Ok, very pretty. The style doesn't seem to be drastically altered either, which is a plus. I also kinda dig the new Zergling design with the wings and all. Look like big angry termites. Just two things that I'm a bit wary of. First off, I really hope that the game isn't too multiplayer focused. Warcraft III had a nice long campaign with a nice long expansion, they'd better keep that up as I'm nowhere near good enough at RTSs to enjoy getting thrashed repeatedly online. Second, those shots all seemed very Terran campaign-y. By this I mean all on barren rock and sterile space stations. That could get quite dull quite fast. A return to Aiur or an Aiur-like world would be nice. Maybe even some new stuff. Anyone else curious to see how the Zerg would cope with underwater battles?