Salacious Snake

Aw, shit yeah, the Quake Start map is so good for deathmatch; I love the item placement, like the secret opening for the red armor in that suspended water thing, and the 100 health and stuff in the entrance to Shub's pit if you take the Nightmare path. My contribution to the thread is wave 64 in Space Giraffe: Shit just gets so crazy at this point, it requires you to have like full spidey sense and an understanding of the game's audio cues. The achievement for making it through on one life really feels like, you know, you've achieved something. SG also has the best achievement design, but that's another discussion.

My most successful map was called "The Poop Chute," and it was a series of platforms floating in the sky (with a death brush underneath, so I guess it was like a precursor to the "space maps" in Q3 or UT). Like most things I made, it was mostly rocket launchers, with no health or armor, and the best powerups were in spots that were very dangerous to reach. The name came from a tube that you could either try to run across the top of to get the invulnerability (leaving you very exposed and likely to fall off), or that you could enter to reach a teleporter which would take you to a platform above the rest of the level with a BFG and probably a quad damage. I was a huge fan of dead-end chokepoints, like in American McGee's DM4 The Bad Place, where there's that lava room with the rocket launcher on your right when you enter, and the 100 health and some rockets on the other end of the bridge (next to a spawn point). It was such a constant meat grinder in there. I miss that kind of level design. If I had more time for these sorts of things, I'd try to organize a thumbs Quake deathmatch. It's still kind of the best.

God, I'd love to do that, too. I have SCART cables for the Neo Geo lying around somewhere, but nothing to plug them into! It would look so fucking goddamn good. Still though, even the worst CRT is worth having for fighting games. I kinda hate the "HD era" for gaming. My plasma is awesome for watching movies, but not for games. I actually think console games in general have been hurt by it. Like, they need to by mushy enough that the latency doesn't matter. I mean, imagine how much tighter the combat timing could be in Batman or Assassin's Creed if everyone was still on CRTs. Tighten up those counter windows to something like the parry in Third Strike... aw yeah. Not that that would be the most sane design choice, but it would at least be a choice.

Whoa, this gave me major flashbacks!!! I made Q2 maps in Qoole (which was indeed very intuitive compared to its contemporaries), which were played across the various dorms at WPI. The biggest difference between our experiences was that there was fierce competition at that school. There were always servers going with Quake and Quake 2, and there were some really good players around. It's kind of a bittersweet memory, since I flunked out, probably because I spent all my time playing games instead of going to class.

Kickass story! I used to join in on Quake deathmatches in high school during a computer science class that I wasn't even in. The teacher never seemed too worried about my presence; the thing that eventually gave us away was him seeing the game running in the reflection on a player's glasses. Quake was so goddamn good, even with software rendering and no sound, and a shitty school mouse.

Now there's a sequel I can get behind.

holy shitballs! edit: what a terrible way to begin a new page! Those pictures are great, Architecture. edit 2: here I'll quote them over here, too, for people like me who use the default page settings:

Yeah, I don't really appreciate the sequel episodes. Heck, bringing Mudd back for a second appearance in TOS was already too much. There are things I would have liked to revisit, though. The original show has so many abruptly ending stories that leave the audience wondering things like "Golly, I wonder what this society is going to turn into, now that the Enterprise crew murdered their leader and took a huge shit on everything and then left." I guess there must be novels that answer these questions, but I'm not ready to go down that beppo's hole.

I think there's a significant segment of the audience who likes MGS in spite of many of its defining characteristics. I know I bounced off various entries in the series many times before things finally clicked for me, because I couldn't shake the conception of stealth I had developed from hours of Thief and Splinter Cell. Once I got it, though, I learned to love its unique style, and I especially fell for the weird storytelling. I love the crazy boss characters and everything, but maybe some people prefer to gloss over that stuff and pretend it's more of a gritty military espionage thing, and MGS2 is so chock full of weirdness that you just can't ignore it. On the other hand, if what you like about MGS is its eccentricities, then MGS2 is going to be the peak expression of that stuff. I came to the series way late and out of order like Griddlelol, so the "bait and switch" wasn't an issue for me. I mean, looking back, it's not like Raiden is a less interesting protagonist than Soild Snake. If anything, he makes more sense in the context of the writing: Snake is supposed to be this legendary badass, but he comes off as a complete idiot thanks to the constant tutorializing, whereas Raiden is presented as a clueless newbie. On the technical side, Sons of Liberty is insane. Playing the HD Collection, you don't get the full "Holy shit this is running on a PS2" effect, followed by the "Wow, this doesn't run so hot" effect of Snake Eater. MGS 2 really steps up the whole sandbox aspect of the series. Going back to the MSX games, the series always includes items and interactions that go beyond what might be considered necessary, but this wealth of options makes it feel like you have the best action figure with the most kitted out playset imaginable. (4 takes this to an insane conclusion.) Metal Gear Solid is a great game full of weird shit, but it always feels weirdly constrained by outside factors, like technical limitations or two-dimensional thinking inherited from the prior games. Sons of Liberty is an unfettered next level piece of singular creative force. Nothing that follows has that same energy (although 3 and 4 each have a lot to love). I don't think that's really the case. In terms of reviews, it was the best received game in the series. I think there's a very vocal minority of detractors. So, this torrent of rambling praise isn't exactly iconoclastic. It's an awesome game, and it was largely recognized as such.

2 is a masterpiece, to use a horribly overused term. I have a lot more I want to say about it when I'm not posting from a phone.

Hey, why not? Geez, filling this out really makes me aware of my penchant for totally stupid names.

I like the Six Million Dollar Man sound effect when he uses his bionic arm.

haha, that's terrific.

I like tooling around in the Batmobile. The way it's used in puzzle-solving and combat feels pretty contrived, and the tank mode battles against those dumb drones are the most tedious thing in the bat-world, but I like driving around Gotham City, and I love the various silly ways in which Batman gets in and out of his car. It's pretty stupendous.

Aside from the animation style, I'm stoked for Cuphead because it looks a lot like Rockman: The Power Battle, which was an arcade game consisting of just the boss battles (ie the best parts) of the Mega Man games. So good.

Super Hypercube! I played that game once on a projector with red-blue 3D glasses, and it was a lot of fun. It's one of those few things where stereoscopy (and head tracking) actually helps because of the perspective it forces you into, kinda like those bonus levels in Super Mario 3D Land. I'm glad it's getting a new life with VR. Superhot in VR sounds rad as hell. Everything in this post is Super. And 3D.

I've always played Metal Gear Slapstick, wherein I initially try to be super sneaky, but when the shit hits the fan I try to somersault and judo flip out of harm's way and generally bumble my way to victory. It's always felt like the "right" way to play for me. I sympathize with those who dislike the controls. It's like MGS had a parallel evolution to other 3D action games where it solved the various problems that came up in a vacuum, paying no mind to growing conventions elsewhere. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, though, because you end up with a fidelity of interaction that is uniquely great. I had my own humps to get over with the various games, but I've ended up appreciating the different compromises and advancements that each made. My fingers my get a little confused at first, but there's a greater intentionality to how I navigate a space with, say, Old Snake, than there is in how I guide Nathan Drake around. There's an analogy here with auto-pilot or training wheels or something.

One thing that often gets my goat is when a game uses scaling or rotation that doesn't respect the pixel layout.

The fourth man: Remo Extremo.

I can totally see why people who really want a new "real" Metroid game would be disappointed in Federation Force, but on its own terms, I think it looks cool. I liked Hunters, and I love futuristic sports! And as far as the baby outrage goes, it makes no sense. It's not like the team working on this would have been the team on a more mainline sequel. Also, I'm about to be a dad, and I'm excited to play Super Mario Maker with my son someday. I can make some really easy levels for him to play, and we can design stuff together... it looks brilliant.

I transcribed the VO for the Tom Clancy's The Division trailer. It's not as over the top as that, but it's pretty vacuous. Like, if that's the best you can come up with, use some music instead. The transcription fails to show the awkwardly long ~dramatic pauses~.

It does look neat. Like, if I had a minecraft world that I was super invested in, it'd be a fun way to get a different look at it. It's like using one of those nifty 3D visualizers for Dwarf Fortress, or flying around your city in SimCopter. clyde: Check it out when a video goes up, it's a nifty demo for hololens AR stuff. It looks very capable, although still leaves plenty of room for skepticism in terms of what the actual experience will be like.

Neato. Dishonored was, like, the game I wanted Bioshock to be. As long as it continues to have level design worthy of the Looking Glass heritage, I'll be stoked to the max.