blackboxme

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by blackboxme

  1. Posted

    I love the FF series, but I've not played Crisis Core. It's good then?

    The story is really goofy, but I find it interesting because I want to see how it ties into FF7. Does that make me sound like an idiot? There was just a lot of strange stuff in FF7, and the CC story is centered around that stuff. I've also heard that Crisis Core has a really good ending.

    The battle system is fun. Everything is designed so that you can dodge attacks if you wait until the last second, and there is a good variety of attacks and abilities to choose from. For instance, in the classic magic spells, fire is a homing missile, lightning is a laser of damage, and blizzard is an area of effect spell, so in practice they're used for different things.

    I see a few problems with the game. Sometimes the missions can be too simple and sometimes the environments are really boring, but these problems seem to decrease as the game progresses.

    If you are a big FF fan, this game is very much in the style of Final Fantasy in pretty much every way, so I would guess that you would enjoy it.

  2. Posted

    I enjoy a JRPG from time to time, and I'd like to give a defense of the JRPG. To make my defense, I'll point to the PSP game FF7 Crisis Core, which I think shows that the JRPG is still fun in one form or another.

    JRPG simplicity

    You can only equip two types of items: materia and accessories. All told, there are about 8 slots to equip. At any given time, you can swap in a set of skills and stats to suit your play style in about 30 seconds and it's all easy to understand.

    There aren't any "skill trees" or "upgrade paths", and if you get a cool new item or skill, you can always equip it without any hassle or worry.

    The accessory system is taken directly from Final Fantasy's past, and it's a really smart RPG design.

    JRPG real-world crossover

    BioShock has tape recordings to tell its back-story, Crisis Core has twitter. Actually, it's not twitter, but something similar: Japanese cell-phone emails. Email in Japan is a cell-phone oriented medium, and as luck would have it, that makes it a good vehicle to tell game back-story. Why? When you're emailing on a cell-phone screen, you keep it pithy! Throughout Crisis Core, you receive one or two paragraph emails from people, corporations, your bosses, just like you would expect in real life.

    In addition to cell-phone emails, you can also get cell-phone calls from like your boss telling you to come back to the office or go on a mission or whatever. How useful is that as a game design idea? Quite useful.

    This is like in FF8 where you had a job so you had a salary to buy stuff with.

    JRPG cartoony stories

    Crisis Core has many classic voice acted scenes. In one, a man yells "What does an angel dream of!?" In another, after the main character passes out, a woman's voice says "Helloooo", to which the main character responds "Mom?" and this repeats 3 times.

    JRPG as slot-machine

    Crisis core makes leveling up and skilling up dependent on a slot machine. You know what's interesting about slot machines? They're rigged. That's smart because then there's no digging around menus to see your progress, and you just end up not caring about that stuff too much.

    JRPG as casual game

    The JRPG isn't the ultimate genre, but it is a nice low effort amusement, much like the modern casual game.

  4. Posted

    Yeah, but they don't buy both at the same time, and for a lot of people that makes a huge difference. I know that the gaming hobby moves very quickly in terms of hardware and software. A console is a much easier way for me to keep up with what's going on. I can buy it relatively cheaply after the 1st price drop (which is fine because the games library usually isn't very sizable or interesting until then) without too much trouble and, therefore, not be hopelessly behind on all the games that are coming out. And, sure, a PC can do a million other things and yes, I'm inevitably going to own a computer, but for anything I can think of beside gaming, a PC that I bought years ago is fine...so it's not like... "I'm buying a new pc every couple years, so I might as well buy a gaming rig."

    That said, my plan is to put together a good gaming PC the next time I get a new computer. Largely for what Chris said about it being an open platform and the fact that Steam has made getting awesome games cheap and easy. That just won't be for a couple years.

    It crushes me that my budget keeps me from playing things like "the Path" and "Little Big Planet", but I can't own all gaming platforms.

    That's the really painful thing about gaming: accepting that there are a decent number of games you'll really want to play, but won't be able to.

    What are your computer's specs? You might be able to do well, considering that a lot of PC games are also on consoles and that tech is years old now as well.

    Why did I turn to PC gaming? I didn't have a tv for the past year...

  5. Posted

    I love the history in Chrome. I used to set my timesheets at work according to them.

    Control+h, everything's laid out there real nice.

    Problem is, Chrome really sucks at loading images for me. It will bomb half the images on a site and take 30 seconds longer than firefox to load. Also it doesn't have firebug.

  9. Posted

    Well done Jake, that was a really interesting discussion about finishing games.

    When I was little, I didn't finish any games at all, which made me feel like a jerk.

    It's interesting, some of the only games that I finished growing up were JRPGs. It's like JRPGs were the first genre that said, "we should make it so the player can finish the game, even if they aren't super skilled or dedicated." I think people are really grateful for that.

    Now that most games can be beaten by normal people, the big problem is the "padding out the game" problem, where they put 3 times more content in than the mechanics justify, to appease gamers who want "value for their money." I hate those "value for money" people.

  10. Posted

    Haven't played the game after I beat it (should get back to it soon) but I kind of liked driving around on the roads, except when it got to the point where the objective was 90 miles south of the headquarters in which case it became monotonous and annoying.

    The swimming is really great, until you get Malaria and drown at any random time, which is why I stayed away from it throughout.

    Did you ever take the bus? There's usually a civilian car at the bus stop, sometimes a nice dune buggy.

    So you guys would swim for like 5 mile distances? Lol, wtf

  11. Posted

    I have and will continue to swim a lot. Its one of the games that have got the swimming mechanics right.

    I agree. I swim in random ponds for no reason, just because the swimming is so well done. You also go surprisingly fast while swimming.

  12. Posted

    I'm also struggling to see any tactical merit in the game so far either. Enemies, whilst momentarily unable to pinpoint you if you're in "deep" cover, seem to work out where you are in a just a few seconds -- whether you continue to fire at them or not. This negates what should be a choice between skirting around the outside of a camp, picking off enemies, or just marching straight down the road guns blazing. I've actually been killed trying to stealthy a lot more than I have just casually running around in full view.

    You aren't supposed to kill a lot of soldiers as you sneak into the camp, especially if the camp has like 20+ soldiers in it: there's too much risk that a second guard will hear or see something. The reason you skirt around the outside of the camp is to find a path with good cover so no one will notice you. I try to do all my missions stealthily and I often only kill a few guards start to finish.

    I actually think the far cry 2 enemies aren't too bad in terms of seeing you through bushes and stuff, since I can see them to about that degree if I'm really looking.

  13. Posted

    How did you guys get around in the game?

    I mainly used boats, buses and walking. At other times, I'd take the jeeps or the dune buggies off road to avoid patrols.

    Driving on the roads is the worst: you've got that engine noise blaring, you don't get to enjoy the scenery, it isn't particularly fun, and you're always getting attacked. With the other modes of transportation, I always feel like I can do something clever or interesting.

  14. Posted

    Anyways...how 'bout that there Mass Effect 2? GT just put up a dev interview and holy shit, spoilers be damned (we're talking end-game possibilities here, wow) it looks really good. It also has bonus rockin' dev-'stache action!

    When I saw that video, I just wanted to shout, "NERDS!"

    Wasn't Mass Effect Bioware's first Next-Gen game? That's kind of crazy, since there's usually a big step up between the first and second game you do on a new console.

  15. Posted

    Cigol: I think Shepherd is handled in an interesting way, and the social interaction was on a whole new level for me because my character was so well portrayed. If you disagree, that's fine, I haven't played every great PC RPG yet, and I might agree with you if I'd played some game or another.

    In case you're wondering, Fallout 2 is my favorite RPG of all time.

  16. Posted

    most, if not all, encounters with other characters were very stale history lessons where they lectured you repeatedly about stuff that would have been nice to have been introduced to subtly rather than hit over the head with...

    I ran into this a little bit, and here's how it breaks down

    upper left - charisma

    upper right - sympathy/paragon

    left - backstory

    right - all business

    lower left - intimidation

    lower right - ball busting/lone wolf

    Going to the left too much turns shepherd into a nerd. Only choose left if you are genuinely interested in hearing backstory.

    Yeah, most of the paths end up with similar results, but the important thing for me is that my Shepherd is a believable character. I had a lot of fun with that. With Wrex, I'd be a hard-ass because he obviously likes that; I'd tease Liara and Kaidan because they are nerds; I'd be bff's with with Ashley; and I'd occasionally yell at/hang up on the council when they were being dumb.

    In other words, it's not the freedom to make "significant choices," it's about making social interaction more fun and more realistic.

  17. Posted

    What?! So your point was Mass Effect was "groundbreaking" (meaning "especially innovative") in the area of character development. I point out a list of games that came out before it with similar attributes... and you complain the list is too short?

    Man, the internet can really get you down sometimes.

    I think we're arguing that Mass Effect did it a bit differently from those games. IE, you could shape the character, but the character also has an inherent personality and history that's separate from the player. In most games, the character is more of a blank slate. When I look at my Shepherd, I know she's gone through some bad times that I don't know about. Maybe that's because she's well voice acted, and most times the player character isn't voice acted in games like this.

    Never played planescape torment tho, so maybe that's similar.

  19. Posted

    In other games, a dialog tree is more like a computer terminal that you run queries on to get info or complete a quest. In Mass Effect, you can bust people's balls, make jokes, lend a sympathetic ear, yell at people, etc. just for the fun of interacting with the other characters.

    Also, I agree with you DanJW, about how it solves all those player character problems: it solves the Grand Theft Auto problem.

  21. Posted

    I agree with Coldkill: I think Mass Effect was a groundbreaking game.

    I can't think of any RPG where the player character was so directly in the game world. I felt like I could shape the main character's personality in a cool way. I'd tease Liara for being a nerd, and I'd hit on Kaidan and watch him squirm, and have Ashley as my wing-man at all times because I thought she was the coolest character. I really enjoyed the interaction with these three characters in particular.

    I think a lot of people might have had less fun because Liara is such a nerd that it's no fun trying get romantically involved with her, but people just wanted to see the sex scene.

    Then the combat: I really enjoyed it. It had all the things I like about shooters, but slowed down to the point where I could understand what was going on. That's a really good, mainstreamed RPG combat system. I played Vanguard by the way, which may be the funnest combat class, so maybe other people didn't play the same fights that I did.

  22. Posted

    The pre-rendered cut scenes are done with the in game engine, I prefer that over renderings which bear no semblance to what you are actually seeing.

    The thing is that a lot of the cut-scenes were spaceship stuff, and the engine was much better at rendering people than outer space stuff.

  23. Posted

    Anyone check out the Bioshock 2 official podcast? Episode 2 features Hot Scoops.

    2 nice things I learned from listening:

    -More non-enemy NPCs to interact with in Bioshock 2

    -You're not a big fat big daddy, but a slim plasmid-using big daddy

    Also, the Big Sister character seems intriguing.

  24. Posted

    What's next? Quick time events?

    By the way, there ARE a bunch of prerendered cutscenes in Mass Effect! They just aren't quite as flashy as I hoped, since I'm a Final Fantasy kinda guy.

  25. Posted

    - If people don't believe what I'm trying to tell there is no need to tell it at all.

    That's a great quote.

    -If we feel that something should be changed in the last minute we have the possibility to do that.

    That seems very Japanese to me, and also awesome.

    Thanks for posting the interview!