twmac

I love the fact that the idle thumbs podcast is inspiring people to do stuff. See Chris, Hot Scoops, Video Games, you have to keep going or we'll run out of inspiration! Even if some of that is rants.

The comments about the linearity in this game is why everyone should play one of the Way of the Samurai games. Seriously, if you want a game that lets you do anything, including completely fuck up your playthrough, you need to play WoTS3. I convinced someone at work to play it and he sank about 100 hours into the game. It is also the only game I know where the gamefaqs info is incomplete and in many places incorrect.

Wow, I played the game when the screen tearing was bad but the framerate was fine. So the patch screwed up the framerate? Shame. I barely used block and was happy using dash in most encounters. The game has plenty of content, which is a good thing...?

I did quite a bit of backtracking and exploring and it took me 20 hours. If you ignored most of the stuff then maybe 14 hours?

I beat Half Life 2 two weeks ago.

That's actually pretty interesting and I had not really noticed the music either but like Xeneth said, I'm one of those people who doesn't really notice the music unless it is really bad. The thing is, unless the music or sound is intrinsic to the gameplay I always put my own custom soundtrack on (except in COD games where IW decided not to support it). One thing I would disagree with, Xeneth, is the John Williams style score. Maybe I misunderstood, are you talking about the idea of taking one song and melding it convincingly into different scenarios, approaching it slightly differently each time or are you talking about that 'epic score' thing that JW is known for. If it is the latter I am well and truly sick of that in games and as much as I hated the music in Bayonetta, would rather see that approach.

Yeah I bought this day of release and even though the game wore its references on its sleeve I blitzed through the game in about 4 days, clocking in about 20 hours of play. I guess the reason I didn't post to this thread talking about it was because the game ate up all of my waking time outside of work. Thoroughly enjoyable game as long as you can get over the fact that it doesn't do anything new at all. I agree although none of the characters were particularly innovative they all looked really good and it definitely helped having Joe Madureira as their designer. Have you met Ulthane yet? That guy is totally awesome. One of things that I think this game did really well is the fact that every collectible and every section was perfectly spaced. It never felt like it was going to take way too long to be worth it (unlike Crackdown). Glad you are enjoying it. In terms of design the fourth dungeon is probably my favourite and it is worth playing until the Destroyer as he is the best of the boss battles. Also, although heavily scripted the portal puzzles that the game throws in near the end, gold.

Well I have been playing it for about 14 hours now and settled into a groove. I'm not sure ynp7 is finding it easy though, they must be some sort of RPG veteran which I certainly am not. I've only just started to understand the hex based world and dismiss some of my previously incorrect assumptions (you regain besels by killing enemies, breaking their shields or causing a gauge break not by doing standards attacks). The combat has gotten better and better. The second boss a particular delight after I figured out how to set off a rhythm of stringing scratch damage with one character to follow it up with direct with another to then chain it into a tri-attack. When you get a flow like that the game shines. The hex based sections help you unlock more items, but also there are special energy based hexes that you can link to these remote stations for extra combat bonuses. Exploring the world then becomes a puzzle game of trying to maximise the number of hexes you uncover in one go using the different combinations of hexes (only certain missions and certain creatures at certain times give out more of these so you are in limited supply). Sort of starting to like the English voice acting, Nolan North is growing on me as his inter combat banter is daft and has some japanese-perv insinuations mixed in with the likable jokes. Still not sure about the story though and the music is pretty generic with the battle scenes being pure butt-rock.

... And that I'm another one of those douches on the internet.

You joke about that shit but I used to play a ton of Gears of War back in the day. On one particular day, after 4 hours of drinking and listening to these helium voiced brats, I ended up in a game with one particularly nice one and I had to ask (they had an East coast Canadian accent so I was within my rights to assume): 'Why the hell aren't you at school?' To which the reply was that she was a girl, I called bullshit. And then one of our other team mates started laughing and explained that she was his girl friend and it took a good 5 minutes before I could be convinced otherwise. I was shamed. The upside is that we are all still friends via LIVE although they mainly seem to play Dawn of War 2.

Hello Wrestle ! Well I have sunk about 5 hours into the game now and from a gameplay and battle mechanic aspect it is really, really good. There is a level of depth that Tri-Ace seem to apply to all their games (I previously played Eternal Sonata) in terms of combat. The difference between this and ES is that you are immediately handed all of the mechanics in one go and left you to figure it out whereas ES’s first playthrough was essentially a tutorial for the extra hard second one. The battle mechanics are based around the tactical use of Hero actions and Resonance attacks and also scratch and direct damage. The first is what you will have seen in the videos where one of the characters runs across the screen pelting bullets at a target. Hero actions use up bezels (you have three in the beginning) but gain you resonance points. Resonance points can be used to create a tri attack which can be devastating when used properly. The clincher here is that using up all your bezels will kill your team and the way to regenerate bezels is to use standard attacks that reduce your resonance count to 0. Scratch and direct damage are also a little different in that the scratch does massive amount of damage but characters can regenerate that damage and you can’t seem to actually kill anyone with scratch damage and instead have to deal direct damage to finish people off. There are number of moves like juggling opponents in the air and smackdowns that do extra damage and there a special tactics like targeting different characters’ limbs, taking cover behind walls and aiming for a designated leader to instantly win a battle. If this all sounds daunting that is because it is and the game doesn’t really do a lot of explaining about this (you can actually get attacked before you even get to a tutorial on how to fight and the game will happily kill you), however, once you get used to some of the game’s quirkier sides the combat gets very good and I’m pretty sure there are few more surprises the game will throw at me. I also like the fact that you are given 3 characters, period, and each one can be levelled up in any of the weapons (which can all be customised in quite a lot of detail by attaching stuff to them) so rather than having a girl who is a healer and a big dude who a damage dealer by default and that default being dictated by the game. Instead you can have the girl a psycho dual wielding front runner and the Nolan North-voiced guy as the support character if you so wish (and I do). I haven’t paid much attention to the story as I said before but there doesn’t seem to be anyone with amnesia or a dark past yet so that is nice. The levels and maps themselves show quite a lot of personality in themselves and it makes me curious about what the designer had in mind in regards to its history when they created the environments. Any way that was way too long but I can safely say that if you don’t mind a challenge and this game piqued your interest then you should drop some money on it.

To be honest I pay very little attention to story in most games, especially in JRPGs where I find them to be universally horrible. You get through a lot of the fights in the beginning without really understanding how they work but about an hour in you should be investing into the tutorials and reading the manual as that is when the enemies start getting properly tough. The world uncovering is pretty cool and it does involve getting different combinations of hexs to make paths. This hasn't really panned out yet and I imagine it will get more interesting as the game progresses.

That game looks gorgeous. Not sure about the main character though. He kind of looks out of place in contrast to his surroundings.

Man, played quite a bit of it now and it really is awesome. I get what Mr. Remo means by the satisfying 'Ting' sound they make when you score a good hit. And how painful it can be to successfully maneuver them there. Well played sir, developer dude, for considering that some of us infidels prefer their gaming on a console.

I went on the indie games and was sooo happy to find that there is an X360 version. Admittedly the twin stick mechanic doesn't work very well but I'm having a blast.

You could always play it on X360, HMV are selling copies for about 20 dollars new. The only thing is you should save in 5 different slots and regularly. Almost everyone I know had a period where their saves got corrupted at around the 70% progress mark (this problem resolves itself eventually) I actually think the game was solid on the X360 and the only thing that suffered was the framerate drop when transitioning between areas too quickly.

I picked this up on release date, it makes an interesting companion to Half Life 2. The game is pretty linear but has the mood nailed. Also probably one of the best looking games I have played on the X360, maybe even the best looking game I've played on the X360.

I have played it and it is a twisted, weird head fuck. I posted about it on the gaming forums. I have had to put it to one side for a bit but I will probably update the thread when I play more. At 24.99 cdn it was worht every penny.

Good man. I just started a project so have had to put Deadly Premonition on the back burner.

Some guy I worked with described the game as 'The most Epic Dreamcast game ever made, released 10 years too late and without making any changes to the engine'. I'm inclined to agree. Incidentally, the gameplay is all over the place but everything it does it does well. It relies on a little too much gunplay (used from Resident Evil 4) and I would happily have gotten rid of all of that and just had the completely off-the-wall nuts storyline. If anyone does buy this game, play through the first section which just a generic third person shooter and get to the crazy centre. If you still don't like it... Well it was less than 30 dollars.

Or the game is such a mess that they need the extra time. I watched the demo for this game on Live television and Sam fell through the world, that was 3 months ago. They couldn't even demo the game with out exposing major glitches. I'm going off on one but does anyone remember a game called Haze? It went platform exclusive, got delayed a lot and ended up rubbish with a ton of features removed. Who published that?

After owning the game for almost 3 years I completed Bioshock last night. Great game, truly awesome visually, but that last 30 minutes was pretty terrible. I also got the 'true' ending to the indie game Leave Home.

If one of you can speak French (and understand the French they speak here) you will earn a bunch of good will from people here but to be honest everyone more or less understands English. Although some of them wish they didn't but that is another story. Getting to Ottawa from Montreal is a piece of cake. Also, not sure if it affects Canada but after that 'pants full of explosives' incident the North Americans get quite uncomfortable about electronic goods in hand luggage. Worth checking out if there are going to be any restrictions on that going through security.

EA Presents: The Bible : The ultimate Genesis collection (featuring such classics as Blades of the immortal, Sword of Sodan and Skitchin') EA Presents: Memento 2: The Early Years

Well I can't recommend anything in Toronto but if you do go to Montreal, I would recommend going to the Biodome and the old port area. For any drinking go to Saint Laurent or Crescent street. Ottawa is the capital and everything but... it is a little dull (it reminded me of Eastbourne in East Sussex: Some where old people go to die).