Garden Ninja

I got it from Gamefly. Played a bit of it this weekend. I want to like it. I'm a sucker for time travel, so I'm enjoying the story so far. The time powers are pretty cool, and the gunplay is well done. There have been a couple of spots that where I ran out of ammo, even though there was ammo around, because I didn't happen to have the right weapon, but that wasn't a big deal. But now I'm at the beginning of the sewers and the phase ticks (or whatever they're called) are absolutely infuriating. I don't think anyone actually enjoys grenade spam. These things are grenade spam with legs, that flank you, and wait until they get close to you to explode. The two or three times I've actually managed to survive the first wave, I get about 50 feet down the tunnel and they spawn more behind me, probably from the pods that I wasn't allowed to destroy. I did just get the Deadlock ability, which supposedly makes the game super easy, so I must be doing something wrong. I'll give it another shot, but right now this section feels like a game breaker, at least since you can't change the difficulty mid-game. Regarding the pseudo-Cyrillic letters in the title, I thought it was silly. I can understand how it would be rather annoying if you knew what the letters actually were.

Your tail lights indicated how soon, and how sharp of a turn you are supposed to be making. For sharper turns, the light was brighter. And yes, there were pillars of light, but the terrain in a lot of places made "Just drive toward the light" a not very effective means of navigation. Supposedly they fixed it and gave you a real GPS -- in paid DLC, as an upgrade on your car -- but I beat it shortly after it came out, and haven't played since so I don't know how it's implemented.

I liked that side-mission as well. However, The whole game had a much more limiting story than it initially appeared to. Initially, I was kind of disappointed that it wasn't an RPG. (I also thought it could have been more interesting if you played a marshal, with some actual investigation -- in much the same what that Chris thought Mass Effect might be more interesting if Shepard were Space-Cop -- rather than just shooting everything, but that probably wouldn't fit well with the Western theme. Sounds like LA Noire might be that though.) After a couple more hours, I got over that, and enjoyed it for what it was. I thought the challenge stuff was kind of boring, but the missions were great and the story (including the side mission stuff) was excellent . I didn't mind the HUD, since it was off in the corner, and easy to ignore, but I personally don't like the trend of removing the HUD from games. It isn't a bad thing in itself. It is really effective sometimes (e.g. Dead Space), but usually it feels like a bullet point, like devs do it because they think they're supposed to, without really understanding why[/] it works (e.g. the GPS-via-tail-lights garbage in Brutal Legend). However, some people love it so I'm glad that the option is there. Assassin's Creed 2 did the same thing; I think you could toggle each individual HUD element separately.

I have a couple questions about Risk: Factions Does it have local multiplayer? How different are the rules from classic RISK? How long do matches last? My wife and I have been looking for a new boardgame to play together (we're getting tired of Scrabble, and Monopoly and RISK both take too long to play), and I think she would play a digital version.

And the moral of the story is: Never pick flowers, or cougars will maul you to death. But seriously, even ignoring the cougars, Red Sage and Desert Sage were an immense pain in the ass to find. They are rarely along the roads, and they blend too well with the environment. I suppose the Survivalist Map would have helped, but for some reason I never bothered to use it.

I beat Red Dead Redemption this morning. I'll probably post more thoughts on it later, in that thread, but the short version is that it was very good.

Not sure. I collected most of the treasure but didn't do any of the challenge rooms yet. The one challenge room I did try was balls hards, so with that and the size of my backlog right now, I just wanted to finish the main game and send it back to GameFly. Once I clear a few of the longer games I'll probably buy it and do the challenge rooms. You know those couple of levels that take place in the dark, and the only light source is the Blob? I did read that one of the unlockables makes every level like that. Maybe the globe is something similar...?

I just beat A Boy and His Blob for Wii. I thought it was really good. Not sure who they made it for though. I think it was marketed as a casual game (probably partly because of the art style), but some of the later levels are pretty damn hard. The gameplay is wonderful old school platforming. Combine that with the hand painted art style, and it reminded me of SNES-era platformers. I definitely suggest trying it out if you have a Wii.

They do. They aren't quite as good or quite as big, but they have them. Every week there is a Deal of the Week. When it started, it was usually only one game at a time, but lately it's been more several games at a time. Usually 33 or 50% off (800 pts usually goes to 400, and 1200 usually goes to 800). They've also had a couple of what they call "Inventory Blowout Sales" (stupid name, considering the "inventory" doesn't actually take up any shelf space). They one in April, and another just ended on Wednesday. They are also running a 50% off sale on Sonic, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. Back on the topic of the Steam sale, I'm actually kind of glad I have a shitty compute and a hefty backlog. Otherwise, my wallet would hate me. There is a lot of good stuff there.

I could have sworn I posted another reply here but I can't find it now. What I was going to say, is that I'm not against pretty pictures and nice music. I actually think it looks kind of cool, but with something like Kinect, that doesn't handle like a tradition controller, showing some gameplay footage isn't enough for people to understand how the game works. Even the video that showed a guy playing Child of Eden wasn't particularly useful: it just looked like a dude waving his hands around. It wasn't clear how his hand movements translated into inputs to the game. I did want to mention though, that the latest Weekend Confirmed podcast has a segment where they talk about Child of Eden, including how it controls. If I understood it correctly, you use your right hand to shoot, and left hand to lock onto targets. There was also something about "sweeping" I think, but I didn't get that (they said it was related to something from Rez, which I haven't played). It sounds like it could work, but I'm not sure that it would be worth $60. Hopefully, they'll be smart and package it with Kinect. Unless it's supposed to be an XBLA title?

I don't see how you can trademark a single, common word, but even ignoring that, he's a troll. I hope EA fucking destroy him. Protect their IP, and counter sue for defamation and force him to pay their legal fees.

This screams tech demo. Sure, it looks cool, but was basically just pretty pictures and nice music. They only showed a few second of the guy who was presumably controlling the thing, and what they did show, made it look incredibly imprecise. Also, I assume it is a Natal (or Kinect, or whatever) demo, so why does it look like he is playing on an enormous MS Surface? I haven't been watching coverage; are there more videos of this somewhere? Do they actually explain some of the context? Suggest why this might be fun to play? I hesitate to write this off based on one video, but what they showed doesn't amount to much. Oh, and ditto about the "Fuck Ubisoft" comment. Shame that. They used to be one of my favorite developers.

Gameplay looks alright, and I like the aesthetic, but after watching that trailer on RPS, I'm even more confused as to why they are calling this XCOM. I only played a bit of the first on a friends machine (and I think I rented/borrowed the Playstation version once), so I'm hardly an expert, but I thought the aliens were standard Greys (or Greens, as the case my be). What the hell is that black shit? I didn't watch with sound, if they said. Edit: Watched again with sound. Still don't get how the goo monsters are tied to the original "lore".

Game Informer had an interview with the Artist for the game (and maybe the comic? Don't remember), and it seemed awesome -- I dig pixel art, and old school beat-em-ups . That video was equally great. I saw the trailer for the movie when I say Prince of Persia, and that looked pretty sweet also, though I had completely forgotten about the game at that point. @Hermie, you mentioned timed-exclusive? Is it supposed to hit XBLA eventually? If so, I may pick it up. Although, I kind of don't want to give Ubisoft my money. Decisions, decisions.

I play Pathfinder with a few guys each Tuesday. It's my first time playing D&D outside of Infinity Engine games, and this campaign started about 3 months ago, so I'm still learning the rules. I also play board games with the wife, on occasion. Usually Scrabble, or Risk.

Thanks for posting that review. After reading that, and seeing a trailer for the Wii version, I kind of want to play both versions. Although, sparkly prince is a bit weird. Not sure what that's about.

Could be worse. Could be "Shooter 2: The Shootening"

It depends on what kind of racer you're playing. I enjoy arcade racers, but am not into sim racers. Although, I should clarify, since other people have a different definition of Sim vs Arcade. For me, if it controls like shit with a gamepad, and feels like it needs a racing wheel to control well, then I consider it a sim racer. For example, I think most people consider Need For Speed to be an arcade racer, but I tried the demo Need For Speed Most Wanted, and it felt simmy to me. I haven't tried OutRun, so I don't know where that lies. For stuff to try, I really like Pure and Burnout Paradise, both of which have demos on Xbox Live. I also really enjoyed the demos for Blur (Multiplayer) and Split/Second (Singleplayer), and they both reviewed well. Though, if you are interested in multiplayer, I'd suggest Blur, since it seems better balanced. The takedown stuff in Split/Second is cool, but seems like it would get annoying in multiplayer.

I beat Overlord II finally, on Monday. I've been playing it on and off since I bought in January. I really liked it, but on the whole, I think the first one is slightly better. They are both excellent games (must plays, in my opinion), but the second has more annoying crap. Some differences: The Minion AI is better in 2 (non-Blues are significantly less likely to drown) if you send them near water. Browns, Greens and Reds have mounts that they can ride, which give them some additional abilities. Browns ride Wolves, which can rush to break up enemy formations, and jump short gaps; Greens ride spiders, which can climb on webs; Reds ride salamanders, which move quicker (for ride by torchings), and can move along ramps. Forging weapons and armor has been changed. Simplified in that you forge specific items with specific bonuses now, and a set cost, rather than generic items with general buffs, depending on how many minions you put into the item. I like this better, I think, but it does limit customization. They also complicated it by adding two additional resources for forging -- Gems, and Dark Crystals -- the second of which there is a limited amount in the game (30, I think) which isn't enough to forge all items. The alignment system serves roughly the same purpose in both games, but the naming makes more sense in 2. Destroying things, or killing your subjects gave you corruption in the first. In the second, they changed it to Domination vs. Destruction. However, it felt better implemented in the first. If you killed a couple people, you gained corruption, but you could recover from it, and get back to 0%. In 2, it came down to Dominating or Destroying the town (more than 50% of the residents I think), so one or two didn't matter, but you couldn't recover from a Destruction action if you are trying for Domination. Although, the Alignment decisions are all larger scale in 2 (I killed the first boss, rather than enslaving him, and the Reds burned something I didn't want them to, but I didn't reload), and the only Corruption actions I made in 1 were on a smaller scale, so it is probably a wash. Normally I hate not having direct control of the camera, and I remember finding that somewhat annoying in 1. They used it for 'sweeping' your minions instead, and it worked well. In 2, they added direct camera control with the right stick. Sweeping is still there, but you have to press up on the stick first, which makes sweeping much less fluid, and therefore much less useful. Some of the fights felt really cheap, often, but not always, because of the camera. I haven't played it in a couple of years, but I don't remember that being a problem in the first one. Unless I missed it (possible, since your Lair is much larger), there is no dungeon to refight defeated monsters. I didn't use it much in the first game, but it was a neat feature that they should have kept.

Well, maybe I'm just weird. Part of it is also that right now I using Giant Bomb's lists, with separate lists for Collection, Wishlist and Backlog. With Backloggery, it wouldn't show up unless I marked it Now Playing. I tried backloggery for a while, but it was missing a few features that I wanted, so I transfered my lists to Giant Bomb, which has the searchable database and the boxart. But it is a generic list system. It wasn't really designed for Collections/Wishlists/Backlogs. All you get is the game title, boxart and a comment, and you have to sort manually. It has a couple of the features I want but it missing most of the rest, so I think I am going to revive my Backloggery. Because I haven't used it in a while, it's a bit out of date right now, but I'll be updating it this weekend. Here's the link, add me if you like: http://backloggery.com/games.php?user=garden_ninja

Unfortunately, only because that particular issue is so common. Still, better to have it then not. I just wish it covered other things as well. The optical drive on my 360 failed in January. I thought about buying a new PC instead, but considering I had just bought several games, and most of my friends have 360, I'm too invested to just give it up, so the new PC will have to wait a bit. (Damn you Microsoft and your good but unreliable product! ) Edit: to the OP, as Speedy said, there is a specially warranty for RRoD, but if for some reason you are out of warranty, repairs only cost ~$100. Not a small amount of money, but better than $400, or even the $200 for an Arcade SKU.

That's an excellent analysis. I never really thought about exactly what made the game easy, but I think you're right. I enjoyed PoP 2008 when I played, but I haven't had any inclination to return to it since, largely because of the limited challenge. (Specifically, the timing for your next action was extremely forgiving.) What was left after that, was some puzzles, some not very interesting combat, and a story that was completely nullified by its ending (supposedly, the DLC has the "true ending", but I haven't played it). I really enjoyed both Assassins' Creed games more that PoP 2008, and the basic mechanics of platforming in those games are even easier. In both games, the platforming was largely the point of the game, so I think it is the level design and setting. For level design, PoP kept reminding you it was a video game. I know they were supposed to be ruins, but all the levels felt like levels in a video game, rather than a place that real people might have lived at some point. In AC, the levels made sense as actual buildings, and all the people wandering around made the world feel alive. But I do recognize that the lack of people in PoP was a design choice, so I guess I just find living worlds more interesting than completely dead ones. (Post Apocalyptic worlds can be interesting, but largely because of the effect on the people. Totally barren worlds, with little contact outside the group, not so much.)

It's probably either an ad for a game that was canceled, or a reference to Metal Gear Solid 2, where Snake introduces himself to Raiden as Iroquois Pliskin (though, based on you mentioning MGS, I guess you probably already know about that).

The thing is, everyone who complained that the game was easy because you couldn't die wasn't thinking it through at all. If you fall, Elika saves you and puts you back at the last checkpoint. That is really no different than pretty much any game made these days, except that they chose to represent the fail state with a "You've been saved by magic" animation, rather than a death animation, a "You suck. Wanna try again" screen, and a reload. The game isn't easy because you can't die; it's easy because it's easy. (For what it's worth, Penny Arcade said some similar when it came out.) It's a beautiful artistically, but there is very little challenge in the platforming itself.

I played a similar sounding game. I remember thinking it was a cool idea, but I ended up hating it because it was so fucking hard. Like get completely stomped by the computer in 30 minutes hard. I think it was Deadlocked: Planetary Conquest (I couldn't have told you the name before looking it up, but I remember it was by Accolade, so it was probably that). Is that the game you're thinking of?