mikemariano

I was horrified by this image from Kotaku: the maddeningly narrow, linear path of the first six hours of Final Fantasy XIII. I never want to play this game. Yeah, I know everybody does mostly the same stuff in a JRPG anyway, but this promises to be endless cutscenes, some battles, and zero exploration. I know people will tolerate this type of gameplay, but look at that image. Is that conducive to fun role-playing? Compare that to Chrono Trigger. Compare it to a Western RPG like Fallout 3. Compare it to Diablo, which lets you leave the dungeon every once in a while. Is that image what people want?

It's insane how much Half-Life 2 has become a part of my life. I replay the game regularly. Alyx asking me to set up turrets is like a wife asking me to take out the trash. Suburban bliss! I even seek out Half-Life 2 in other media. I saw Children of Men because a friend told me, "Dude, it's like Half-Life 2." I purchased the documentary "Manufactured Landscapes" about Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky because his industrial landscapes resemble Highway 17 and Sandtraps. That said, game of the decade is still Thief 2: The Metal Age.

Thanks for the advice, SoulChicken. I'm leaning heavily on the Ashley/Wrex combination and it's going OK. Ashley is almost nothing but shields, medium armor, and health regeneration and she still goes down way too quickly. I beat that biotic mission by running back all the way back to the beginning of the ship and leaving Wrex in the hallway (Ashley didn't last five seconds). Previously, holding position let one biotic incapacitate me while three others fired away. Increasing the distance they had to travel forced them to attack one at a time, making it easier for me. Oh, and I've developed a major cheating strategy by holding down the "biotic menu" button almost continuously throughout combat. Holding RB pauses the action, but lets me re-aim my weapon, even if I am not using a biotic power. It's just like VATS!

I bought Jump, which is an incredibly gorgeous looking platform game. It is way too long and has no save feature, so I will never reach the end. I still like it though. The old Technos team released a new version of Super Dodge Ball as an indie game. It looks fun and it controls just like the old NES game. I played the demo but haven't purchased this one because I've always been terrible at this game.

Oh, Mass Effect. Why are you so hard to love? As lone survivor Jane Shepard, here are my three post-Citadel engagements so far: Engagement One Searching for somebody's daughter, I ended up on a hazardous planet with pirates! Thinking they might have the daughter, I drove around the pirate base and ran them all over! I walked inside and got my entire team slaughtered, over and over, before we could even get in the doorway. I gave up and left. I sure hope the daughter wasn't in there. Engagement Two Searching for somebody's daughter, I ended up on a lava planet! The bad guys from the first part of the game showed up, so hey, this was probably a main-plot-related mission. I ran them over! I had to get out of my car. I sniped people! I crouched and ducked behind rocks on my way up a hill to a building. A cutscene started, introducing wall-climbing guys! The cutscene ended, and I was immediately shot four times and died. I could not get up from the crouch and reach a nearby crate for cover in time. Restarting from my last save twenty minutes earlier, and knowing that this cutscene was coming, I walked up the hill without crouching. I made it past this moment and eventually rescued whoever I was supposed to rescue. Yay! Engagement Three I found a ship that I could board! I took a team on board and saw red dots on my radar. Hmmm, even though the game didn't say anything, I guess this ship has bad guys. I walked into a room and people began shooting! The game said I had 3 minutes to rescue the hostage! What hostage? With 2:58 left, I was knocked to the ground by a biotic power and shot to death before I could stand up again. I repeated over ten times with slightly longer survival times, but the same results. I am at level 14 with all points assigned with decent (I think) guns and ammo. My Shepard can use a pistol and sniper rifle and some biotic powers. Yet I die almost immediately in every non-Geth battle. I know I suck at games. I just wish Mass Effect gave me a better idea what I was getting into. I feel foolish attacking a pirate base or boarding a ship of biotic kidnappers and then just walking away.

I'm just outside the fourth sanctuary, so I guess I have a song coming up.

Wow, you beat it? I still have plenty of Spirit Tracks to go (I think). I must apologize, though. I can sympathize with none of your annoyances. Touch controls are the only Zelda control scheme I like. Zelda treats me right. The pan flute works fine for me---though I had to learn to slide it correctly and keep breathing. And the train concept still holds its novelty. It's strange---the 3D console Zeldas have been getting further away from what I like, but these two DS Zeldas have made me giggly and delighted.

Spirit Tracks is adorable so far. I've completed the first two proper dungeons and three floors of the central tower. I still don't understand why all of these Zelda games need to take place on a continuous timeline. It's more confusing than revelatory. Someone needs to write a women and gender studies paper on the role of Princess Zelda in this game. Oh, and train track switching is harder, but more exciting than it is in Donald Duck's Playground. I just wish I didn't have to avoid .

I bought the game this afternoon and will play it on my train ride home tonight. I'm excited! Let's hope it isn't just a rip-off of Donald Duck's Playground.

I just bought Mass Effect (because it was insanely cheap). I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out my equipment and combat, but the most off-putting thing about the game is Shepard him/herself. Chris Remo called the version of Shepard in the Subject Zero trailer "Douchebag Shepard", but I have trouble seeing how any version of Shepard isn't a douchebag. Every word out of my "Jane" Shepard's mouth is either inappropriately hostile, self-righteous, or completely disinterested. Remo called the Paragon/Renegade split more interesting than Good/Evil, but neither makes for a Shepard that's fun to be around. PS: I walked into Flux's and immediately laughed, recognizing it as the home of SoulChicken's space disco douchebag Shepard.

Irishjohn: I bought Henry Hatsworth for $5 on sale. Even if I give up now I can say I've gotten my money's worth. Uh, unless I break my DS in half. It really is a fun game, though. Zombies Ate My Neighbors is another example of a game that was insanely hard, but still loads of fun. miffy495: Now that I've encouraged Irishjohn, I'll pull an about-face. I really don't seem myself getting past this next level. It's just too long of a time commitment. Henry Hatsworth may have to join Moon, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, and, uh, every Final Fantasy game on the list of "I've gotten all the way to the end and given up."

Man down! After a frantic session of Henry Hatsworth (level 5-1) on the train this evening, I put down my DS and extended my left arm, only to find it cramped up. I am still in pain as I type this. The worst part about the insane difficulty of Henry Hatsworth is that the levels are way too long. My train ride was 50 minutes, but this still wasn't enough time to beat the level. I did die twice, losing about 10 minutes of playing time the first time and less than 5 the second. So, assuming I become awesome enough to never die in Henry Hatsworth, the game still requires over a half hour per level. That's longer than the speedruns of Super Mario Bros , 2, and combined.Tonight I played through the physical pain and beat 5-1 at home. But this game doesn't love me for it---it will find a new way to abuse me.

Hi, feel free to ignore this post; it's going to turn into a sales pitch, but it's game-related and it really interests me. I recently discovered that Internet historian/archivist/documentarian Jason Scott is raising funds for a sabbatical in order to complete some of the projects he's working on. One of these projects is a documentary on text adventures called Get Lamp, which I am eager to see completed. He has already done a documentary on BBSs, which was neat. I donated, and I think Scott's projects overlap a bit with the interests of the Idle Thumbs crowd. So I encourage those inclined to donate, or at least check out his stuff. The BBS Documentary and much of his Textfiles website are freely distributable, so you can torrent them.

Whoa, sorry for the derail. I didn't mean to slight . I just didn't enjoy over and over.thl, as to your original question, it's difficult to think of a "definitive" Xbox game in the same way as, say, a Nintendo system. On the Wii, you can say, "Oh, everybody has Wii Sports/Mario Kart/Mario Galaxy." The flagship Xbox brand is Halo, but Master Chief just isn't as iconic as Mario. Actually, when it comes back for Season Two, I think 1 vs. 100 is an iconic Xbox title. It's fun to watch and fun to play along. Even when the trivia questions make me feel old.

I stopped buying PCs years ago and became a Mac partisan, so when Half-Life 2 came out for I bought an original Xbox. When The Orange Box came out I bought an Xbox 360, so I agree with your thinking there. All the Valve games are lots of fun, and the Xbox experience doesn't feel like a "cheap" port. The only game I really hated that gets universally praised is Bioshock. It might be up your alley, but I got tired of the monotonous combat and playing LucasArts's Pipe Dream over and over again. Also, there's no shame in buying a Halo game. Apparently (according to this site's podcast) ODST is very good; otherwise I'd say Halo 2 for single player (most intentionally stupid plot, least intentionally stupid maps) or Halo 3 for multi-player.

SoulChicken, you just made me laugh out loud in front of my co-workers. Good work. I feel bad about ambitious video games like Mass Effect or Shenmue that have to deal with massive tonal shifts. Even when you try and roleplay seriously, your game can end up .

More to the point, it's OK to dislike Half-Life, though it's really good at what it does. I feel bad because I don't see anything I like about Killzone 2 or Uncharted 2, even though they are praised as two of the most perfect games of all time. Killzone 2 seems to be "shoot a ton of guys and do a turret sequence"---but a really good version of that. Uncharted 2 seems to be a similarly exemplary "shoot a ton of guys and sometimes solve a puzzle" game. Considering Half-Life 2 can be summed up as "shoot a ton of guys and often solve a puzzle," I'm likely just too finicky.

I don't think suggests anything more calamitous than what actually happens in Episode 2.In the trailer: In the actual episode: This change was probably made for plot reasons, rather than to mollify fans. Alyx falling would have to happen almost immediately at the start of Episode Two, presuming it's in reaction to the explosion at the end of Episode One. That means---right away---there would be no one to tell Gordon what to do. Being alone isn't terrible, but Gordon needs direction. Otherwise he would be alone in the middle of the woods jumping up and down, pressing "E" on everything.

OMG!

Hey gang! As a PC-less Wii owner I finally got to start playing Chapter 3! I find in my old age I'm becoming less tolerant of repeated dialogue in adventure games. I have been enjoying Tales of Monkey Island enough where I didn't skip any cutscenes or dialogue. But in this chapter, Guybrush must do at least twice. Hearing identical dialogue in situations that---even for the characters---are meant to be repeated events feels wrong. After holding out for so long, I finally put my finger on the B button. Skip skip skip.... Is it still the . key on the PC? Ah, nostalgia....

I guess this is worth revealing: I never would have found out about Idle Thumbs if Chris Kohler hadn't mentioned his guest appearance on Wired's GameLife. He's really good! That said, I trust you three to do with the podcast whatever you feel is appropriate. Even more to the point: I trust you three. What other podcast covers the subject: "I played a game and this is what happened," and does it so well? This is why we play video games, right? You capture that spirit and share it expertly.

So if you guys are the Beatles Rock Band of Podcasts, does this make Bethesda Yoko Ono? Congratulations, Nick! And congratulations to all three of you for being such enthusiastic, entertaining storytellers. You've done great work.

Favorite: Maniac Mansion. Monkey Island sort of solidified the idea that a graphical adventure should have a single, rigid storyline, but I really like the different possibilities offered with the characters you can choose to control. I would like to see an adventure like this again. Best: Thief 2. The level design was perfect and allowed for hours of sneakery. Desert Island: Chain Factor. I didn't think I liked web-based puzzle games. I still don't. But I played this for a LONG time.

I thought this game sounded familiar when you talked about it on the podcast. Chris Kohler of Wired had an article about how changing the difficulty to "Casual" made the game into the lunatic fun he expected it to be: "How I Learned to Stop Being Normal and Love the Sledgehammer". What difficult level are you playing the game on, Chris?

You've done better than me, snappity. I played Symphony of the Night about a year ago and thought I beat it. I said, "Wow, that was quick. " Then I discovered online that I got the "bad ending" and there was much, much more to the game. I debated on whether or not I should try to beat the game "correctly", but I justified it by saying "Credits rolled. That means I beat it." Instead, I am now trying to beat a different Castlevania game: Order of Ecclesia. I made it to Death a few months ago and got stuck, then popped the game in again recently and read some walkthroughs and am now at Dracula. I guess I should look up how to fight him. Order of Ecclesia is probably a more balanced game than Symphony of the Night. Boss battles are brutal, though---if you don't equip the correct glyphs and items, you die far too quickly. Too quickly to experiment, even---it's better to "cheat" and read the correct line-up online.