mikemariano

I think Bioware got their DLC packages mixed up. My Dragon Age dog should wear the sunglasses from the Matrix and Thane Krios should wear the dog cone, right?

Hmmm, time to post a Craig's List ad..... I want to destroy your SimCity - 30 m4w - Men Seeking Women Dear women of the Internet: I want to destroy your SimCity. I will pay generously. I want to watch a live screen capture of you creating your city: bulldozing, zoning, and putting in landmarks. After you have completed 20 years of progress, send your savegame to me as a ZIP file. I will then show you a live feed of me plaguing your city with tornadoes, UFOs, and Godzilla. It's the only thing that turns me on. Contact me at the above address.

I bought Broken Steel last night and loaded up my last save from seconds before the end of the game. After the "two weeks later" message, one of the old dudes said: "Thank goodness you survived that thing that should have killed you. You saved the Wasteland! Now we just have to fight the remaining Enclave members. Can you assist us?" > Sure, I'll help. "Great! Why don't you ask me what needs to be done?" > Gotta go. Then Fawkes and I left to go complete some sidequests. I think I'll get one or two of the other add-ons before the sale ends. Thanks for the advice!

BOLD PREDICTIONS Professor Layton will point at you in 3D. Phoenix Wright will point at you in 3D. The Elite Beat Agents will point at you in 3D. Bald Bull will charge at you in 3D. There will be no Starfox game.

Good point, Moelman. The reason I completed so few sidequests is because the plot picks up so much urgency once you find your father. There is a lot of "We must go to the so-and-so right now!" I'm sure it's easy enough to ignore Liam Neeson and come back when you feel like it, but I felt it would be improper to do so.

Don't worry, Lord Korax. According to Wikipedia I was well into my college career when the first games came out. Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade described die-hard adult Pokemon players in their social circle, and they're both older then me. I figured that meant that a good amount of people my age and above played the games, but in this thread I'm the oldest one here. I'll go pluck my gray hairs now.

Xbox Live's Deal of the Week is for Fallout 3 add-ons, 50% off! So that means more endless questions about "which DLC should I buy?" I rescued Liam Neeson, powered through the main plot ignoring the side quests, beat the game, and haven't picked up Fallout 3 since. I feel guilty about this, and was thinking about getting one or two of the add-ons to get me back into the game. Reading this thread, I'm leaning towards Broken Steel and Point Lookout; they seem the most "Fallout-y" to me from their descriptions. Do I understand these add-ons correctly? Operation: Anchorage - VR Missions The Pitt - Um, I don't know. Broken Steel - More Fallout. Point Lookout - Scary guys. Mothership Zeta - Aliens. PS: I'm only level 15.

There are a million excuses not to play Pokemon, but I was surprised when I found my personal one. I was in Gamestop and one of the more recent games (Diamond and Pearl?) was in a demo unit. I began to play, then stopped after half a minute. My pet peeve? "I can't play this. I walk too slow!" And I never played Pokemon again.

... IGN.com

Do we really need to love Mass Effect 2 for its combat? It's more straightforward than the first game, but I don't think it puts it above most other games. I loved Mass Effect 2 for it's dialogue system, which helps it fully commit to its cheesy space opera nature. It's the best space dating sim I've ever played. DISCLAIMER: My Shepard remained celibate throughout ME2. She's still holding a torch for Kaidan.

I downloaded and played the demo last night; ummm.... Err.... Wow, this is what FPS gaming was on the consoles 10 years ago? SpeedyDesiato and miffy495: I think I'm the kind of person you had in mind who might have trouble with this game. The only N64 game I've played is Ocarina of Time on Virtual Console, so I have no nostalgia for Goldeneye or Perfect Dark. I enjoyed Serious Sam on XBLA, which I hadn't played before. But I think "run fast and kill dudes" is easier to get into than "turn slowly and kill dudes". And the level design! Perfect Dark's office building had a billion different ways to enter the same room. I wandered around the main floor six times before I saw the elevator to the basement. I had a similar problem with Marathon on XBLA; it's way too easy to get lost in the smallest of spaces. It kills the action. I guess multiplayer is a lot better?

I beat Mass Effect 2 a few weeks ago. I immediately started a new game with a new Shepard, but I hated the decisions it was making for me. "Kaidan is dead? Forget about this! I'm going back to the first Mass Effect and making my own decisions." I started up Mass Effect 1. Almost immediately, ammo upgrades and seven different shotguns started pouring into my inventory. Nooooo!

Here it is! Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse I'm most curious about this screenshot: Does this suggest a Mass Effect-style dialogue system?

As a Mac zealot who hasn't owned a Windows computer since 2003, I have missed the entire Steam era. Half of the games mentioned on the podcast are ones I will never play. Finally my stubborn behavior will be rewarded! I look forward to putting my Half-Life CD key from 1998 into Steam and seeing what happens. A thread on the Steam forums suggests it might work!

For those of us on the opposite coast, we can only hope that many confs will be grenaded into our faces...

AKA: "Episode 3 Release Date: Never"

I think it's awesome that the Super Mario Galaxy 2 footage makes it very obvious how you will play the game. Every second says to me, "Oh, you have to jump on the platforms, but they're going to flip, so I have to time it right." and "Oh, I've got to drill through the planet, but I have to make sure the guy is standing on the other side so I hit him." It's so tangible! I can taste myself playing this game.

This weekend I did a loyalty mission and brought Jack along for support. During a break in the fighting, the other character said something like, "It looks like these people were trying to do this important thing. But something went wrong." Jack added: "Shit happens." Her tone was exactly like Duke Nukem's. Time for Bioware to buy the rights to Duke Nukem Forever and toss in our favorite Subject Zero!

I was thinking about the Hugo games a few months ago and came across developer David P. Gray's website. He now makes jigsaw puzzle games for Windows. He has a forum on his site and people have asked him to make another Hugo game, but he's not very interested because the development of a modern adventure game couldn't be a one-man operation. Gray has some advice for that: That's what I did to get past the dog and I always felt like I was cheating. It's nice to have my methods blessed by the developer himself.

I bought last year's DS remake of Fire Emblem (Shadow Dragon) a few weeks ago, but I'm really starting to loathe it. Fire Emblem does away with a lot of the JRPG trappings of games like Shining Force 2 (the only other strategy RPG I've played). This isn't necessarily bad---it emphasizes battles over walking around town annoying every villager. But Fire Emblem doesn't feel pure, it feels flimsy. Everything not on the battlefield is either an emotionally inert cutscene or a pause menu. Fire Emblem has been mentioned on Idle Forums with regard to its permanent death feature---any character that falls in battle stays dead! Forum member Aon said that permanent death causes you to care more about your characters, but I actually think a lot of characterization is lost by having to create a story where almost everyone is disposable. Most characters only speak in two scenarios: When they are recruited. When they die. That's not much characterization. I'd forgive all of this if Fire Emblem had better combat. Like Shining Force, the best strategy is to tiptoe close to the enemy, draw a few of their units toward you, and overwhelm them. But Fire Emblem makes this dead stupid. In Shining Force, turn order is semi-random and you're never quite sure how many spaces enemy units can move. This makes it a challenge to get close, but not too close. In contrast, Fire Emblem lets you move all of your units at once and puts a bright red line on the ground to represent enemy range. Your strategy: don't cross that line until all your units can cross that line. The rock/paper/scissors combat system of sword/axe/lance also fizzles. Individual unit strength and double-strike advantages play much more of a role. My lance-wielding knight plowed his way through many supposedly advantaged axe-wielding pirates; meanwhile my sword-wielding paladin made little more than a dent. I suspect that if I don't move my units to the exact squares the developers intend, then it's nothing but one-hit kills and permanent death for me. I don't see why this is an enduring series, or where the strategy comes into play. Did people just love playing as Marth in Smash Bros?

Kidding aside, my memory is fuzzy but my first game might be the Missile Command arcade game. I remember I liked slapping the trackball and giving it a good spin.

The first game you played was Super Mario Advance 4, released in 2003? I feel old.

Ah, I am at the beginning of Chapter 4, plus four "prologue" battles before that. I expected the prologue to be basic and restricted, so I was disappointed to see that nothing had changed when the numbered Chapters began. Chapter 4 is when the game finally lets you choose your units, equip them, and place them on the battlefield. This is good to have, but the spartan execution put me off. It reminded me of the Action Button review of Final Fantasy XIII I linked previously. As described, FFXIII says to the player, "Hey, here's a neat battle system, but you're not allowed to actually use it fully until halfway into the game." I was worried that Fire Emblem was doing the same thing to me. I'm probably overly suspicious, but there's nothing here I can fall in love with yet. Especially with dialogue like this: That...isn't exactly charming. But I guess it beats the dialogue I'm hearing over and over again in Mass Effect 2.

Thanks for your response, lobotomy42. It sounds like the Gamecube versions let you get more out of the Fire Emblem setup than this remake does. In Shadow Dragon, there are no conversations and (so far) no cleverly-designed maps. It's all process without any reward showing you why you should be playing a tactical RPG this way. It's weird; I get the sensation that Shadow Dragon isn't the best introduction to this series, even though it's technically the first game.

OK, I'm only about two-thirds of the way into Mass Effect 2, so I have to avoid most of this thread. I am embarrassingly caught up with all the soap opera aspects of this game; I'm so ashamed. I worry about my Commander Jane Shepard's love life. It's so trashy; I like the cut scenes more than the combat.