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Just played the first mission of Chaos Rising, and there are some changes.

1. Supply pickups are now separated into healing, combat, tactical and explosive. This meant by the end of the mission I was out of grenades and had a tough time dealing with buildings and sentry guns. It won't be as big a deal later when I equip Avitus with Rockets or Plasma, but it didn't help me in the finale.

2. There's a big manual option next to the co-op button on the planetary map. It details all the weapons and concepts. Some of this stuff would show up at appropriate times in vanilla (you'd get a blurb about Rockets when you get your first rocket launcher), but a lot of stuff didn't have any info. It's really good.

3. At the end of the level there was no boss. Instead there was an impossibly large horde of Imperial Guard to fight that I had no chance of dealing with with my lack of explosives, abilities and cover. Luckily the timer ran out and they just ran away. It was still the same basic idea of combat that is unlike the general combat in a negative way, but at least it gives me hope that every stage won't end with a big bad boss.

Also there was no difficulty select, so I'm either stuck on hard or there is no difficulty for this expansion.

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I just finished the Sly Trilogy.... Sly 3 was my least favorite, it tries to do too much... It has too many characters, most of them unnecessary, but I love the series overall...

That sucks to hear, I never made it to Sly 3, but I will soon when I replay them all for the HD collection (Received an Amazon gift card for doing surveys, bought it).

Everything I heard about Sly 3 made it seem like it would be even more interesting and more exciting, but it seems that it overdid it. Is that disguise system at all worth noting?

Liking bad games and demanding they be remade for current generations. It leaves people like me (who haven't played them before) hearing all these great things about these games, and being like "Oh sweet! I'll be able to play that soon!" Then I play it, it sucks, and I hate you all.

I think you should just figure it this way: Sly 1 and 2 were pretty good, with 2 being very enjoyable, so what's the harm in throwing in the third game to make a value pack of games more complete? I mean if you didn't like the first two, that's fine, but generally I only hear good things about those at the very least.

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Just completed Nelson Tethers...

:tup:The good

LOVED the look of the game. I LOVED being in a hand drawn world. I hope there's more games with this kind of "natural" beauty on the horizon. I felt totally spoiled by the graphics, the presentation and music. I could stay in that world forever.

:tmeh:The meh

The storyline could have been improved... there were some great moments (red gnomes stealing puzzle pieces), that really hinted at something potentially powerful.

:tdown:The bad

The puzzles stank. It's obviously a lot harder than it looks to create a Professor Layton style game (I guess there's a reason they spend so long tweaking the puzzles). Here, while not all puzzles were bad, they were distinctly lame, and I never felt the thrill of completing something that was particularly tricksy.

Also: The ending :fart:

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Two done this week. Monday night I finished Darksiders on PC, and then yesterday afternoon I finished a 22 hour replay of Paper Mario 1 on the Wii's Virtual Console. Thoughts to follow.

Starting with Paper Mario, because it'll be nice short impressions. I beat it when it came out, borrowing it from a friend in Junior High School, and have always remembered it fondly. As such, I was sort of frightened when it came out on Wii. I really didn't want it to be another one of those games that I love in my memory but is actually not something I'd ever want to play now. Holy crap was I wrong. That game is so much goddamned fun. There is actually nothing about that I found lacking even 10 years after its release. Even the graphics look current thanks to the pop-up book aesthetic. The only thing dated about the game at all is a few instances of obvious aliasing. All told though, holy crap this game is good. If you have a Wii and $10, you need to play this game. Especially if you haven't before.

Darksiders also cost me $10, thanks to a discount on Steam over the holiday. It was both good and infuriating. Ultimately I think I quite liked it, but I'm definitely more of mixed mind than on other games. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's essentially Zelda, but everything is either on fire or bleeding. For example, in Zelda, you will come up to a locked door in a dungeon, find a small key somewhere, and open the door with it. In Darksiders, you will come up to a door with some phantom eyeball sealing it, find a mystical dagger somewhere, and STAB THAT FUCKING DOOR IN THE EYE. This carries over to pretty much everything in the game. You get a boomerang, but it's some four-bladed glaive that slices the ever-loving fuck out of your target. You get a bow, but it's an extreme revolver. You get a lens of truth, but it's a mask that gives you crazy glowing eyes. It's all that sort of thing. None of it is bad, but most of it is laughable. On the other hand, I was willing to forgive a lot of things from that game just for the opportunity to play a Zelda-like experience on a non-Nintendo system. There are a lot of things that Zelda does that those that imitate it just don't get. Darksiders, for the most part, gets it. It also adds a very nice combat system which is accompanied by a very broken camera. The amount of times I lost three or more life bars due to staring at a wall in the middle of combat and completely losing sight of my enemies was more than I could count. Also, the horse sections were terrible. The fact that they made you fight a boss on horseback was the worst decision. Actually, most of the third dungeon was a mess of terrible in an otherwise very enjoyable game. This is about halfway through the game, so my enjoyment curve of Darksiders would be a line in the "hey, this is pretty fun" area of the graph with an incredibly sharp drop in the middle and then right back to fun. Play the game if you're hard up for a Zelda, as it's a pretty good one. I do not recommend paying more than $20 or so for it, but lately I've noticed that what I'm willing to spend on a game has been dropping dramatically so adjust accordingly.

All in all, a good week. I love Paper Mario, and have just psyched myself up a tonne for the new 3DS one they'll be putting out this summer. I intend to replay Thousand Year Door (which is one of those games where I have a save file AT THE DOOR before the final boss fight but have never beaten it) and Super Paper Mario (actually beat it when it came out) in the meantime, so hopefully that will give me enough time to save up the cash for the system and game. Darksiders, good but not great, though I certainly enjoyed myself with it. Those who do not find ridiculous straight-faced extreme-ness either hilarious (me) or legitimately awesome (a sad person, or age 13) need not apply.

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Darksiders also cost me $10, thanks to a discount on Steam over the holiday. It was both good and infuriating. Ultimately I think I quite liked it, but I'm definitely more of mixed mind than on other games. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's essentially Zelda, but everything is either on fire or bleeding. For example, in Zelda, you will come up to a locked door in a dungeon, find a small key somewhere, and open the door with it. In Darksiders, you will come up to a door with some phantom eyeball sealing it, find a mystical dagger somewhere, and STAB THAT FUCKING DOOR IN THE EYE. This carries over to pretty much everything in the game. You get a boomerang, but it's some four-bladed glaive that slices the ever-loving fuck out of your target. You get a bow, but it's an extreme revolver. You get a lens of truth, but it's a mask that gives you crazy glowing eyes. It's all that sort of thing. None of it is bad, but most of it is laughable. On the other hand, I was willing to forgive a lot of things from that game just for the opportunity to play a Zelda-like experience on a non-Nintendo system. There are a lot of things that Zelda does that those that imitate it just don't get. Darksiders, for the most part, gets it. It also adds a very nice combat system which is accompanied by a very broken camera. The amount of times I lost three or more life bars due to staring at a wall in the middle of combat and completely losing sight of my enemies was more than I could count. Also, the horse sections were terrible. The fact that they made you fight a boss on horseback was the worst decision. Actually, most of the third dungeon was a mess of terrible in an otherwise very enjoyable game. This is about halfway through the game, so my enjoyment curve of Darksiders would be a line in the "hey, this is pretty fun" area of the graph with an incredibly sharp drop in the middle and then right back to fun. Play the game if you're hard up for a Zelda, as it's a pretty good one. I do not recommend paying more than $20 or so for it, but lately I've noticed that what I'm willing to spend on a game has been dropping dramatically so adjust accordingly.

Darksiders, good but not great, though I certainly enjoyed myself with it. Those who do not find ridiculous straight-faced extreme-ness either hilarious (me) or legitimately awesome (a sad person, or age 13) need not apply.

Can I find it neither hilarious nor legitimately awesome? I actually did find the narrative cool (though admittedly not rooted in any actual mythological history) and most of the environments pretty interesting, though I wouldn't nearly go as far as to say they were awesome. I guess the contrast between the "hardcore" nature of Darksiders juxtaposed on the formulaic, overly familiar world of Zelda just made me like it more.

As for the gameplay, my experience was very similar to yours. The middle section definitely dragged the most, though they really brought it home with the rad final scenes and environments. Darksiders actually probably would make it into my top ten of last year because it seems like a solid success at making a current-gen Zelda-inspired game with no brick walls to stop me along the way (I'm looking at you, Water Temple and your variants).

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Still have to finish Darksiders. Last thing I did was the worm thingy.

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That sucks to hear, I never made it to Sly 3, but I will soon when I replay them all for the HD collection (Received an Amazon gift card for doing surveys, bought it).

Everything I heard about Sly 3 made it seem like it would be even more interesting and more exciting, but it seems that it overdid it. Is that disguise system at all worth noting?

I think you should just figure it this way: Sly 1 and 2 were pretty good, with 2 being very enjoyable, so what's the harm in throwing in the third game to make a value pack of games more complete? I mean if you didn't like the first two, that's fine, but generally I only hear good things about those at the very least.

The disguise thing in Sly 3 is... disappointing? It just forces you to play a password minigame each time you encounter a guard...

I wouldn't call it a bad game, but I would call it bad Sly Raccoon game?

I recently beat the fanmade remake of Alien Breed called Alien Breed Obliteration and... it's better than the official episodic game? :erm:

Although it's kinda annoying that each time you complete the objective for the level the self destruct sequence begins....:frusty:

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Had "the pleasure" of playing Medal of Honor and Call of Duty: Black Ops back to back at a friend's place in the past weeks as "co-op" playing one level and then friend playing the next level and then me again the next one etc.

Holy crap both of these games were incredibly bad. The worst was the situations in Black Ops where you don't even need to press button once because the game does all the action for you. For example the first level and the glass in the mouth and punch sequence.

I'm never wasting my time on MoH or CoD games again. Modern Warfare 2 was already quite horrible so I should've known, but we wanted to try this one out as "co-op" as we have done always before with CoD games.

Our faces at the end of both games were first :eek: and a moment afterwards :frown:

I got really badly burned by bad games inside six months time, starting with Singularity during last autumn and now with these two. At least Goldeneye is great so I haven't lost my faith in FPS games completely.

Also this year Portal 2, DNF and Rage will come out and I can't remember any other worthwhile FPS games coming out this year so I hope 3/3 of those will be great games. All my other free gaming time will be given to backlog games, but of course there will always be new interesting ones, like Okamiden in a few months.

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Had "the pleasure" of playing Medal of Honor and Call of Duty: Black Ops back to back at a friend's place in the past weeks as "co-op" playing one level and then friend playing the next level and then me again the next one etc.

Holy crap both of these games were incredibly bad. The worst was the situations in Black Ops where you don't even need to press button once because the game does all the action for you. For example the first level and the glass in the mouth and punch sequence.

I'm never wasting my time on MoH or CoD games again. Modern Warfare 2 was already quite horrible so I should've known, but we wanted to try this one out as "co-op" as we have done always before with CoD games.

Our faces at the end of both games were first :eek: and a moment afterwards :frown:

I got really badly burned by bad games inside six months time, starting with Singularity during last autumn and now with these two. At least Goldeneye is great so I haven't lost my faith in FPS games completely.

Also this year Portal 2, DNF and Rage will come out and I can't remember any other worthwhile FPS games coming out this year so I hope 3/3 of those will be great games. All my other free gaming time will be given to backlog games, but of course there will always be new interesting ones, like Okamiden in a few months.

I enjoyed BLOPS and MoH's campaigns, I think I actually prefer MoH's single player but obviously BLOPS has the MP nailed.

Modern Warfare 3... now that's an unappetizing prospect.

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I forgot to write more in detail about the two said games.

The biggest problem with the two games I had was the losing of freedom and not being totally immersed in to the game. The game is really clearly doing stuff for you instead of you yourself actually playing the game and having the freedom of choosing when, what and how. Even the problem is not that the game is doing it for you, but don't let the player see this so clearly.

I know MoH & CoD series have always been very tight piperuns where you have to do everything exactly like the developer wants you to do it. I remember Medal of Honor Allied Assault being a very bad example on how to do a shitty level. In MoH:AA there was a situation where you are supposed to do Private Ryan stile rise on the beach from the attack boats while German machine guns are gunning you down. Unless you ran an exact pre-decided route by the developers, the machine guns would always kill you. I hate that, if you have the whole open beach there, why do you have to run it in an invisible pipe?

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I forgot to write more in detail about the two said games.

The biggest problem with the two games I had was the losing of freedom and not being totally immersed in to the game. The game is really clearly doing stuff for you instead of you yourself actually playing the game and having the freedom of choosing when, what and how. Even the problem is not that the game is doing it for you, but don't let the player see this so clearly.

I know MoH & CoD series have always been very tight piperuns where you have to do everything exactly like the developer wants you to do it. I remember Medal of Honor Allied Assault being a very bad example on how to do a shitty level. In MoH:AA there was a situation where you are supposed to do Private Ryan stile rise on the beach from the attack boats while German machine guns are gunning you down. Unless you ran an exact pre-decided route by the developers, the machine guns would always kill you. I hate that, if you have the whole open beach there, why do you have to run it in an invisible pipe?

Scripted events let the developer show you something crazy and make sure you see it, but they certainly make you feel less like a player and more like a viewer. Even when Valve taut that they know where players are looking and make stuff happen there (therefore eliminating the need to take control away from the player) their games are still cripplingly linear and controlling.

It's the classic GTA problem: We want you to chase this guy and see this cool chase scene, so to make sure you see it all you can't kill him till it's over. No matter what.

Makes me feel like i'm a little kid at a zoo. "Look over there! Look at that!"

Except i'm more like a little kid at a zoo with an abusive and over controlling parent who keeps grabbing me and forcing me to look at things.

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I beat Super Mario Sunshine last night. The game was fun even though the developers made some horrendous design decisions.

Sunshine requires you to beat seven out of eight levels in order in every world. Unlike Galaxy, where you just have collect stars from whatever level you want, most of Sunshine's levels are mandatory.

This structure becomes intolerable in combination with the "retro levels" filled with bottomless pits galore and terrible camera angles. That fake a cappella version of the Super Mario Bros. theme will haunt my memory forever.

Those can be game-killing flaws, but the game had enough Mario goodness for me.

QUESTIONS: As far as I can tell, Sunshine's Shine totals mean nothing. Is it worth trying to get more or all of them? Also, should I bother to play Super Mario 64?

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I beat Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 1 & 2... I didn't understand a thing the games said, yet I somehow beat them... :eek:

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I beat Super Mario Sunshine last night. The game was fun even though the developers made some horrendous design decisions.

Sunshine requires you to beat seven out of eight levels in order in every world. Unlike Galaxy, where you just have collect stars from whatever level you want, most of Sunshine's levels are mandatory.

This structure becomes intolerable in combination with the "retro levels" filled with bottomless pits galore and terrible camera angles. That fake a cappella version of the Super Mario Bros. theme will haunt my memory forever.

Those can be game-killing flaws, but the game had enough Mario goodness for me.

QUESTIONS: As far as I can tell, Sunshine's Shine totals mean nothing. Is it worth trying to get more or all of them? Also, should I bother to play Super Mario 64?

I find this post hilarious. Most people I know can't stand anything in Sunshine *except* for the retro levels. Sunshine is generally considered a weak follow-up to Super Mario 64, which you should definitely play, although if this is your first time experiencing it, it probably won't have 1/10th of the impact it did on those of us who were experiencing a "true" 3D environment for the first time.

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I find this post hilarious. Most people I know can't stand anything in Sunshine *except* for the retro levels. Sunshine is generally considered a weak follow-up to Super Mario 64, which you should definitely play, although if this is your first time experiencing it, it probably won't have 1/10th of the impact it did on those of us who were experiencing a "true" 3D environment for the first time.

Nope. Sunshine was fantastic, as well as being better than 64 by a long way.

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Beat the Bad Company 2 single player.

I still really enjoy the characters (I watched a friend play the first as was enthralled by Sweetwater) but otherwise, fairly standard "move through this location and shoot dudes on your way to the next cutscene"

Still, not the worst shooter campaign I've ever played.

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Nope. Sunshine was fantastic, as well as being better than 64 by a long way.

You are entitled to being wrong. :grin:

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Still have to finish Darksiders. Last thing I did was the worm thingy.

That was the part that sucked. Congratulations, the rest of the game should be pretty good.

I beat Super Mario Sunshine last night. The game was fun even though the developers made some horrendous design decisions.

Sunshine requires you to beat seven out of eight levels in order in every world. Unlike Galaxy, where you just have collect stars from whatever level you want, most of Sunshine's levels are mandatory.

This structure becomes intolerable in combination with the "retro levels" filled with bottomless pits galore and terrible camera angles. That fake a cappella version of the Super Mario Bros. theme will haunt my memory forever.

Those can be game-killing flaws, but the game had enough Mario goodness for me.

QUESTIONS: As far as I can tell, Sunshine's Shine totals mean nothing. Is it worth trying to get more or all of them? Also, should I bother to play Super Mario 64?

I also believe that those retro levels are the best part of the game, so feel free to disregard my opinion. That said, I came ridiculously late to Mario 64 (my first experience with it was the DS remake) and still found it a fantastic game. I found Sunshine to be mechanically superior, but preferred the variety of goals and environments in 64, so make of that what you will. If you'll be playing 64 on a Wii with a classic controller, I'd say go for it. As much as I loved the N64 controller in the day, my hands have been too trained by modern games (and are much larger than when I was 10 and playing N64) to go back.

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I also believe that those retro levels are the best part of the game, so feel free to disregard my opinion.

See, I was all psyched for retro levels: "All right; enough of this squirt gun! Let's do some traditional Mario platforming!" But the flow never worked out for me. It was always a slow, Grundy process that went like this.

  • Jump across a platform of death.
  • Reposition the camera.
  • Wait forever to make the next jump.
  • Die anyway.

That's not a Mario tradition I want to celebrate.

That said, I'm interested in the wider variety of goals in Mario 64. That might be fun. I have a Classic Controller so I have no excuse not to buy it. Thanks!

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That was the part that sucked. Congratulations, the rest of the game should be pretty good.

Really? I didn't think it was that bad. It actually was a something different from the 3 almost identical previous sections.

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I hated the horse controls and that long arena combat section was terrible. Also, dodging the worms before getting the horse was handled in a really shitty way. I appreciated that they mixed it up, but they mixed it up with shit. That said, going around those towers and activating them was pretty cool.

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I finished Star Wars: Force Unleashed. And I'm still playing it on the unlockable super-hard setting.

So yeah I like it quite a lot. It's nice, light entertainment. It does everything you expect it to. Even the story and characters are... not bad.

In fact I would have liked more of them. The cut scenes and character development were nice, along with the secret history of the rebellion, but I just felt like there were bits missing. There seemed to be months or years in between each mission and cutscene and the game would have benefitted from showing us more of that - the charatcers would have meant a lot more by the end. I'm guessing stuff got cut out during rushed development.

Talking of which, the cracks do show in the otherwise slick facade. sound run-overs, stupid loading times, occasional crashes. Not really what you expect from the world's biggest movie/game franchise.

The writing did suffer from the prequelitis symptom of contradicting the original movies (Princess Leia doesn't seem to have met a wookie before Chewbacca, and she certainly doesn't have much regard for him. Yet in this game she is held prisoner on their homeworld and begs you to free the noble wookie slaves... doesn't add up). OK so that's a really nerdy nitpick but various mistakes like that still irritated me.

The game is a bit too easy, but with some crazy difficulty spikes, mostly on bosses. I came to enjoy it all; steam-rolling carnage or challenging duels. The action can get a teensy repetitive as most reviewers said, but if you add variety of your own it's not too bad (I would have liked even more evnironmental 'traps') and the whole thing is short anyway.

Such a shame that Force Unleashed II is apparently horrible.

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