Noyb

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by Noyb

  1. Posted

    The discussion on game characters displaying signs of autism reminded me of a recurring theme in Douglas Coupland's work (Microserfs, jPod). He seems to believe that most programmers suffer from autism to some degree. I'm not too sure I believe that, but if true it may be a case of the art reflecting the artist.

    You do make a good case for the application of the uncanny valley phenomenon. The closer something gets to appearing human, the more the little deviations freak me out. I never got a chance to try out Facade, due to a hard-coded minimum CPU requirement that literally won't let me play.

  3. Posted

    For the future, those games are in my sig. For the present, I just got a huge haul of used games I always wanted to try (Breakdown, Advent Rising, Call of Cthulu, Phantom Dust, Lego Star Wars II, God Hand, Rez, Shadow of the Colossus, Rygar, and the still incompatible Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath), so I'll be satisfied for a while. :grin:

  4. Posted

    Thanks for the comparison. When I played the 360 version for a song, my fingers were completely lost, even though I'm on the last setlist on expert in GHII on the PS2. I guess I'll get used to it when the new one comes out in fall. (Way too many games coming out this fall. :fart:)

    Very nice job on X-Stream. :grin:

  5. Posted

    I imagine a Hollywood movie based on the Sims to be a thriller about a group of roommates who discover their lives are not entirely under their control. A mysterious smoke detector inexplicably appears after a freak electrical fire that consumes one of the friends. Another struggles to make enough friends in the small town in order to progress in his career. A couple have a baby despite the mother never delivering. In the final scene, the cast all fall in love with each other, because of the amount of talking they had done trying to find out who is controlling their lives.

  6. Posted

    I just tried out the xbox version after playing with the original GH1 controller for a while. That controller is tiny. It looks like they fit all five frets in the same area as the first four in the original controller. Did they cave to consumer confusion about having to move their hand too much, or are my fingers just freakishly large?

  10. Posted

    I'm having fun with the beta, but then again I guess you can call me a fan of the multiplayer. (Bungie.net records me as having played 3,800 games of Halo 2 online :eek:)

    The most fun I've had with Halo comes from playing multiplayer objective matches with a team of friends I know well. Something just clicks for me when I'm on a team that's communicating well, covering each other, adapting to the changing combat situations. It's much less enjoyable playing with random, profanity-spewing wankers online. After a certain skill level, a good bit of strategy is needed to succeed online: knowing the map, proper positioning, base assault/defense tactics, weapon strengths, etc.

    To be fair, I was only into Counter-Strike for about half a year. I tried going back into it after Source came out, and got completely massacred, only killing about 4-5 guys in an hour of playtime. One thing Bungie got right in Halo is the matchmaking system, which matches you against another team at roughly the same skill level, which makes for tighter/closer matches after a bit of calibration period. I like that Halo is a bit slower, less twitchy than Counter-Strike or Unreal Tournament (which I also liked for a bit, but didn't stick with for nearly as long). Of course, by that same reasoning, I should be absolutely mad about Gears of War multiplayer. Didn't really give it enough of a chance, possibly because by that time Halo had been so comfortable and familiar to me.

    I agree, Halo's single player is pretty weak both in terms of repetition and story. The first game was infamous for monotonous levels that were recycled heavily in the endgame. The second one tried to tell a deeper story involving religious dogma and civil war, but still fell into the old trap of hoping that the gamer will mistake vagueness for profundity. Not to mention the "ending" which wasn't so much a buildup to the sequel as it was waiting for the next level to load and seeing the credits instead.

  12. Posted

    Oh, I think he's talking about the locked lunar lander puzzle.

    The keys are locked in the lunar lander on the moon. You have to use the coathanger (from the tv antenna) to unlock the door through the window. I remember seeing this used in a book as a kid, funnily enough.

  13. Posted

    Stay tuned for my complaining about it when it suddenly gets hard.

    Minish Cap was one of the easiest Zelda games I've played, the only one I actually beat without dying the first time through. Fun while it lasted, though.

  16. Posted

    I loved Bust a Move 2, 4, and that first PS2 one. The multiplayer chaining system for 4 was so crazy. Basically, if you drop a bubble and it can complete a triplet, it does. Makes for some epic comebacks, but all within the player's control. I haven't tried any of the more recent ones. What don't you like about the new one's multiplayer?

  17. Posted

    Glad to hear that. Hopefully the tight timeline won't mean that the translation will be rushed. There was a significant difference between the early and late case translations in Justice for All. The writers definitely know how to tell a good story, regardless.

  18. Posted

    Anyone try out the demo for this on Xbox Live? It's like unfocused DDR, with button cues coming from anywhere on the lower half of the screen instead of four straight columns. The presses are timed to aspects of the song like Elite Beat Agents, but seem more random than most good rhythm games. The demo songs didn't seem to get as hectic or fun as most music games, even the included hard song.

    I'm usually a sucker for music games, but this doesn't seem worth the price. It costs 800 MSP ($10 American) for just 10 songs. Since EA is publishing it, I'm expecting that future songs will be overpriced as well. I was hoping that since the maker was Bizzare Creations, the publisher of the original great deal on XBL (Geometry Wars at 400 MSP), it would be at a fair price. I guess the title should have been Boom Boom Dollar.

    IGN's review isn't that helpful, but is good for a laugh:

    BBR is a musical take on Geometry Wars.

    The fun part comes when you finally memorize the location of each face button.

  23. Posted

    You're on a constant time limit, where the world will be destroyed in three days time. You can save at owl statues, which requires that you quit the game after saving and delete this save when you resume. You can also save permanently by returning to the beginning of the three days, which resets pretty much everything except for your items (although your rupees go to zero, but you can store them for later in an anachronistic bank).

  24. Posted

    Seems like all of the games I was looking forward to this spring have been delayed to the fall, except for Super Paper Mario and a random shareware abstract puzzle game. Luckily, I don't have much time this Spring for video games. Still excited for Bioshock, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Zelda DS, and whatever first party Wii games are still coming out this year.

  25. Posted

    Also, the multi-character "don't know" replies sucked. There should be a turbo button or something.

    There *is* a turbo for dialogue you heard already. Just keep the stylus held against the next dialogue button, and the play turns into a fast forward.