mikemariano

Warning: Do not play the Kane & Lynch 2 demo immediately after playing Limbo. Going from an experience that shows you how good gaming can be to...something else can only induce nausea.

I just beat Chrono Trigger DS! This game is still excellent Apparently the DS version includes a monster trainer? Why? It made me realize that if Chrono Trigger was created at any other point in history I would probably hate it. A modern Chrono Trigger would give us monster training, pointless unlockables, and endless tutorials. Chrono Cross shows us what Chrono Trigger ten years ago would have been: bloated storylines and watery polygon graphics. It's amazing how this game ended up distilling the best of the JRPG aesthetic when it could have so easily picked up more of the genre's weak points. Now for New Game+!

Congratulations, Chris!

My formative years were spent with the Commodore 64, switching to a 486 in my early teens (at that point also getting a Game Boy, then an NES), then an SNES, then a self-built Pentium that was primarily a gaming machine. I was a full-fledged PC gamer for the era of Curse of Monkey Island, Blade Runner, Grim Fandango, Half-Life, Deus Ex, and System Shock 2. But keeping a gaming PC up to date is expensive, and I loathed using Windows for anything else. I soon became a Mac convert—and missed out on most games 2001-2005. (I played Halo and Return to Castle Wolfenstein on my Mac Mini. Fun!) When Half-Life 2 came out, instead of buying a PC, I bought an Xbox—my first console since the SNES—and a copy of Half-Life 2. Most of my other Xbox purchases were also PC conversions: Deus Ex 2, Thief: Deadly Shadows and Arx Fatalis. This was my first time using a console game pad, but I had no problem leaving the world of WASD behind. When did I upgrade to the Xbox 360? When The Orange Box came out. I can't see myself going back to PC gaming, even when this podcast does such a great job of making current PC gaming sound exciting.

"Don't expect to fight a planet of penis monsters." -- IGN.com 1up.com

I am......not going to read any of this thread. I played some of the Deathspank demo tonight. I basically just walked around, mashed buttons, and shrugged my shoulders. This isn't my kind of game. Luckily it's gorgeous. The environments are so much fun to look at. I wish the enemies were more interesting, though—all I saw were skeletons and chickens. I had forgotten how good Ron Gilbert is at being silly, even when his jokes aren't particularly funny. Deathspank's banter with the witch was both sweet and self-aware.

Man, I don't know what Sean sees in that Snoopy game on Xbox Live Arcade. I had the weirdest time with the demo tonight. Presentation-wise it feels nothing like Peanuts. It's got the muted colors and somber piano music of a Medal of Honor game. If the sky wasn't filled with parachuting Snoopys shaking their fists in rage after each kill, it would have no Peanuts flavor at all. And kills are indeed called "kills", which I thought was mildly inappropriate for Peanuts. To see "mikemariano was killed by DarthPenus" over and over again in a Snoopy game was really quite a unique experience.

I just beat Gay Tony tonight. It had its moments, but I am now thoroughly sick of "Rockstar Logic." I'm tired of sitting through cutscenes that approach Metal Gear-levels of length and indulgence—Roman and Brucie from the first GTAIV have an entire cutscene to themselves that has no impact on the mission you have to watch it for. The stupidest moment in Gay Tony came during two missions. In the first, instead of fighting through a building full of angry Russians, you are meant to jump out a window and parachute to the street below. It's actually impossible to fight your way through the building because there's no way to walk down. In the very next mission, you are on a rooftop and are meant to fight wave after wave of enemies. But if you try to parachute, you'll find that it's been removed from your inventory—you aren't allowed to do the same exact thing you did in the previous mission. You have to sit through cutscenes announcing the arrival of a helicopter you must destroy. Is Red Dead Redemption like this? I really don't want to play it if I have to deal with more of this aggravation.

Ha! I can't believe we revived this thread. Since I don't have a PS3, my only choice is to believe the hype and say that Killzone 2 is the best 2D game ever released. Killzone 3 will, naturally, be the best 3D game ever released.

Good work, everybody who complained on the Internet! Now Blizzard can concentrate on the important task of listing to endless complaints about what they'll be changing in Cataclysm. And complaints about Starcraft II's piecemeal deployment. And complaints about Diablo III art direction. And complaints about canceling Warcraft Adventures.

This is an overwhelmingly terrible idea, for all the reasons Grufff, Roswell47, and elmuerte have listed. How does RealID work for minors? A post elsewhere suggests that right now anyone 13 to 18 just writes a name and clicks a box stating that they are the offspring of the legal card holder. That means you're either protecting trolls who are (or pretend to be) minors, or you're revealing everything about a minor's parents---and essentially everything about the minor, as well. Drath: I can't figure out a good motive. Fewer forum users isn't predictable. There's no good marketing/data mining angle. Blizzard has that information already. It seems like they zealously want to give people the ability to name and shame trolls, but really they're just giving those trolls more ammo.

Spindrift is correct, especially after seeing some of that leaked footage. Idle Thumbs' own Steve Gaynor had the best response to the leak: Steve Gaynor also wrote his remembrances of the first Deus Ex for Rock Paper Shotgun, which has officially gone off the deep end of fan worship---look at that front page! I will never forgive Deus Ex for encouraging stealth when it was nowhere nearly as good as Thief's sneaking. That said, I enjoyed the game---I even enjoyed Deus Ex 2. I miss The Omar!

"Fill your belly with delicious fish." -- IGN.com The screenshots at Nintendo.com look terrible. You can barely tell that the black blob you control is a puffin. Considering you controlled an egg in the last game, you don't see nearly enough puffin in these puffin games. So disappointing.

The original X-COM was a newly-created multinational organization in the first game. Timeline-wise this upcoming game takes place too early to lead directly into the first game's X-COM. And the developers haven't said much, but they did indicate that this is more like a reboot.

I'm now thinking the Back To The Future license should have gone to Rockstar instead of Telltale...

I like how all but one of my predictions in the 3DS thread have been proven wrong:

KILLZONE 3D

Until this podcast I thought Neptune's Pride took place under the sea. You know, like The Little Mermaid. I think I even saw this screenshot somewhere, and thought, "oh, maybe these are like plankton that you have to collect..." Aw, forget it. I'm going to get a reclining chair and check out of this conversation, just like Steve.

That's an awesome idea, Joflar. "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite luxury apartment complex on the Citadel."

Hey, I downloaded that, too! And I never played it! Did the environments of Firewalker feel expansive? That's the biggest loss from Mass Effect 1 to 2---no vehicles meant no big environments. There is nothing as breathtaking as the moon or Bring Down The Sky in Mass Effect 2.

Another Mass Effect 2 expansion pack is coming out next week! Has anyone played the Kasumi mission? I downloaded it, but it seemed pretty bogus.

I just saw the latest trailer on Rock Paper Shotgun. I'm really not feeling this game. Combat seems just as lame as Bioshock 1, which forced you to shoot shoot shoot at mindless enemies for too much of the game. Your squad as depicted is comprised of multiple Slippy Toads---if these men are anything but alien bait we haven't seen it. One of the promises in the PC Gamer preview was that X-Com style research and base upgrades would come into play. But from this trailer, research seems to mean "Snap pictures with the same camera you used in Bioshock." Will we also see ammo vending machines in every suburban home? It's still fair to say "wait and see, keep an open mind, etc. etc." But I really want something that shows me why this game stands out, and nothing like that has yet been released.

Awesome thread-revival, bbX1138! In my youth I actually outlined what I wanted from a Back To The Future adventure game. You would be given free use of the Delorean within a certain block of time---for example: the week Marty is stuck in 1955. Everyone in Hill Valley would stick to a set schedule and the puzzles would involve using time travel to interrupt them in meaningful ways. You would also create "past selves" that you must make sure stay safe. Plotwise, uh, some organization from the year 1995 builds their own time machine and kidnaps Marty! As Marty, you are forced to accompany them on their own time travel expeditions until you break free and prevent them from...something. This is what you do when you're a teenager.

This is still at least a year earlier than when Episode Three will come out.