Noyb

(Coming from beating-but-not-five-starring the first two games on expert): Hard wasn't bad until the final set, where it became insane. Expert became masochism for me around the 6th set, and I gave up disgusted and switched to Rock Band around the seventh set. I still feel like Neversoft really borked the difficulty curve, especially since Hard is supposed to ease you into using the fifth fret.

Least Best Room: crowd control distilled to a man, expanding bubbles, and mines. Well, more of a Dead Rising-style maneuvering over a Dynasty Warriors genocide.

Metrosexual, you say?

I'm waiting on getting an HDTV before starting GTA4. I'm currently idling on the fourth set of puzzles (the one past the airship) on Zak and Wiki, and have yet to pick up Professor Layton and Apollo Justice. I also spent a few idle weeks of gaming time making a small game called Apophenia, which generates a pretentious abstract art game of questionable symbolism given a title. Edit: Happy Birthdays!

It wasn't Asimov.

The original wasn't that difficult, although the final boss took a few tries to get the pattern down. Maybe some of the difficulty comes from youngins not intuitively understanding the need for stealth? I remember not quite understanding why I couldn't beat the first *room* of Metal Gear Solid when I rented it as a kid, though I'm not sure if my case is typical. I still haven't beaten Rayman 2, which apparently sold loads. (Bloody late-game introduction of new gameplay mechanics used in the final boss fight. That rocket was so hard to control on a keyboard and I've since lost the game save.) I have to say invoking the word "casual" frightens me. Not like there's anything wrong with easy games as long as they can keep up a sense of wonder and imagination.

Wow, I'm late for this thread. I finally got a chance to play through the campaign (on hardened). I've got really mixed feelings toward all the scripting. When it works, it works well. The Chernobyl bit (up to the ferris wheel) was incredible. I loved that stealth mission, the pacing of the firefights and quiet bits. But when it fails... It's like the game just breaks whatever characterization they were trying in the scripted bits when a General goes from an all-knowing badass to someone who can't shoot a guy three yards away, out of cover, and looking exclusively at me. Actually, part of that might be the monster closets. It's crazy when a firefight goes from a stalemate to a victory just because I walked a few feet forward without even firing a shot. Again, when it worked it was fun, but I kept noticing when the game wasn't clear on where it was trying to funnel me. I guess the respawning makes a bit of sense in a certain light. All said, it was a fun experience. They had some nice Half-Life style first person cinematics. Hmm... looking back at this post it seems like I only liked the campaign when I wasn't in control. Not entirely true, but I had fun. Looking forward to trying out the multiplayer.

Awesome news. The original was so fun.

Wow, I thought that was a joke. "Really works!" - "[annoyed sigh]" -

Got some press in RPS: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1799

I'll see your five pads, and raise you six: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/05/15/konamis-music-games-come-full-circle-with-band-centric-rock-revolution/#more-4067

Oh, and: http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5802

Congrats! (Calvin and Hobbes makes all good people smile.)

Tried the demo. I love the instant restart and checkpoint system, but I don't have the patience for the subtlety the game requires to control the bike well. I'm a bigger fan of the surreal Elastomania, which while without constant checkpoints, is a bit more forgiving by giving you more control over your midair torque. That said, Trials seems really well done, and it feels possible to eventually master the controls. Just not to my personal taste. (Also hyping a game without even playing it? )

So I saw Everyday Shooter, a synesthesia shmup formerly only for PSN is now on Steam. It's kinda like a guitar remix of Geometry Wars, but with a more balanced difficulty curve and more variety in both the gameplay and the music. I'm not normally a shoot-em-up fan (only shmup I ever beat was Operation Spacehog, a Gradius clone by the maker of Icy Tower. Seriously.) , but this game is damn fun so far. It's simple -- the graphics are sparse but functional, all you can do is move and fire in 8 directions -- but each level changes up the gameplay dynamics. I'll spoiler a few since discovering how they work is part of the fun. It's got this great difficulty curve where you can go either for pure survival, or more skilled mastery of the level, with appropriate risk/reward, and you can use the points you accumulate in both the main game and single levels to buy extra lives and levels to practice independently to make the game easier. Unfortunately, there's no demo on Steam, but I'm happy with my impulse buy so far. And fair warning, I've only played it with my wired 360 gamepad so I'm not sure how well it plays with the keyboard.

Cool games. I saw the sheep one in a Jay Is Games competition a while back, but the other two are new to me. Drifts reminds me of an orisinal game. Relaxing, although like orisinal, extended play always makes me notice the shallow difficulty curve. I love the music and background, and the gameplay works well. It personally took me a bit of time before intuitively getting that my life was also tied to the green bubbles I picked up, so I was surprised the first few times I tried picking up a green bubble that was also touching a purple bubble. If you set a personal high score, the high score screen tells you that you need negative points to beat your personal best. I'm not a big fan of putting help screens in an animation, since each player would probably want to consume that information at his own pace. It went too slow for my tastes, but someone else might need more time. Twizzle was fun. Neat concept. I liked the gradual introduction of new elements, the instant restart times, and saving the life-ending parts for the latter portion of the game. I loved the painted art level transitions and general sense of polish. I liked how there is room for both logic and reaction time puzzles in the gameplay. I would have liked a level select screen instead of a simple new game/continue. Some of the latter puzzles were a little too simple to solve since the player is only confronted with one or two productive first moves. I'm not entirely sure the arrow keys were the best choice of controls, since I tend to think of them as straight x/y movement and not the slightly more abstract polar movement. Then again, you'd still be dealing with the relative positions of whatever different keys you'd choose, and choosing "up" as moving outward does reinforce that outward movement is important.

Awesome. Very well done. Was that a wig or dyed hair?

You're probably right. Whois says it was registered through GoDaddy. Hilarious nonetheless.

I liked MDK1's mix of action and sniping, although I don't remember playing much of it until I got annoyed by the *really* infrequent checkpoints. Only played MDK2 on a rental, but I remember enjoying what I played, wacky jetpack dog included. Earthworm Jim 1+2 I enjoyed for its sheer randomness, but Earthworm Jim 3d was just a piss-poor version of Mario 64.

Guess I'll just use the "mark forums read" button on the main page instead of lazily clicking in the topic then. Still haven't seen the show at all, but intend to at some point.

Interesting article. Part of me would have liked to see this game made, but then again Douglas Adams wrote the amazing Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency while spurning Infocom. And the partial walkthrough of Bywater's plans sounded idiotic and random on all levels as opposed to the hilarious masochism of the original. Creating a non-intuitive first puzzle that screws the player over if actually solved? No thanks.

Oh, wow. I didn't believe it at first, but that actually was a strip. Thanks for the link. Garfield seems to be only funny nowadays when it's recontextualized.

Yeah. The wireless controllers take AAs, but most get the play-and-charge kit so you can charge from the 360's USB ports. And the battery life on the controllers degrades fairly fast. Some of my launch window play-and-charge controllers are down to 2-4 hours of battery life. I think the biggest difference in the platforms at the moment is guitar compatibility. As far as I remember, GH controllers are compatible with Rock Band on the 360 and not the PS3. RB controllers are not compatible with GH on either platform. Apart from the Halo theme for GH3, I think both platforms get the same songs for the same prices.

In a similar vein, there's I Wanna Be the Guy, which is like a mashup of all the old Nintendo games, only crueler. I like you guys too much to actually give you the link to such an evil, masochistic game, so here's the start of a youtube series where you can literally see the player start to go slowly insane. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ifS4BhrNmI Also, an interesting writeup/roundup on these "masocore" games. http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=11