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That's interesting, I hadn't really thought about the fighting being something that had changed in Arkham City. What was it that made you find it improved? Is it the introduction of more gadgets into it? Those are somewhat entertaining, though I'm not sure I have them all yet and frequently forget to use them if I'm finding a fight difficult.

I actually thought the quick gadgets were context sensitive at first. the explosive gel, at least, makes crowd control a lot easier.

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That's interesting, I hadn't really thought about the fighting being something that had changed in Arkham City. What was it that made you find it improved? Is it the introduction of more gadgets into it? Those are somewhat entertaining, though I'm not sure I have them all yet and frequently forget to use them if I'm finding a fight difficult.

I found that it flowed a lot more pleasingly. Perhaps they had widened the timing window to make it easier!

The quick gadget actions definitely helped here - maybe the greater variety has given the illusion of better fighting, and my perception has been successfully fooled! Even if so, it has worked, because my perception is all that matters when I'm playing it :)

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I feel like I must be the only person who really, really hates the combat in both of the Arkham games.

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I feel like I must be the only person who really, really hates the combat in both of the Arkham games.

You just like to be contrary. :grin:

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I just beat Corpse Party, an indie adventure horror game from Japan that... is pretty messed up nightmare fuel? In a good way, I guess. :erm:

I'll just say the game is 100% Corpse and 0% Party and leave it at that, OK? :blink:

And I'll just go into a corner an curl up into fetal position and weep the nightmares away now, OK?

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You just like to be contrary. :grin:

The way it snaps you to targets is so unpredictable!

You've got two guys standing to your right, you hold right, and maybe it snaps to the guy further away instead of the guy closer to you. So then your punch whiffs, and dammit, you dropped your combo. The game dropped your combo. Your stupid, artificial combo for the stupid, artificial combo system.

So some of my qualms are down to taste, i think its combo system is dumb, but i think it also does have some real, actual problems. I never ever felt like i had a clear sense of how Batman is going to act in either of those games.

The combat camera also kinda sucks, and i think city has some real clunky controller mappings.

THERE.

I SAID IT.

I've had that bottled up.

Those games are slightly not as good as people say they are, but still mostly excellent.

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I finished Final Fantasy IX maybe a week or so ago. 40 hours, spread over a little under a year.

Overall, I'd say it was pretty to look at, enjoyable, and ultimately stupid. I don't think I have a lot of positive to say about the story or the storytelling, though I did enjoy some bits. Whatever. I'd describe the game as a "nostalgic RPG". It works best if you want to go back and try a PS1 JRPG for the sake of it. It feels like it was made for nostalgics, if that makes sense - though this marks the first time I've ever seen an RPG to some sort of completion, and consequently the first time I ever finish a Final Fantasy game, it feels like a retrospective of all the PS1-era RPGs.

Decent game. I recommend giving it a shot if you can.

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Wow! 40 hours seem quite low for a JRPG!:eek:

I was surprised too. This with a load of grinding on top.

However, I did miss some large bits. Didn't see a single chocobo, for example. Ah well, I got what I wanted out of it! Moved onto the next thing...

Morrowind.

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I was surprised too. This with a load of grinding on top.

However, I did miss some large bits. Didn't see a single chocobo, for example. Ah well, I got what I wanted out of it! Moved onto the next thing...

Morrowind.

Ahahaha. Can't fault you for erratic playing habits, at any rate.

I've only ever finished one JRPG myself, Dragon Quest IV, with honorable mentions to Earthbound, Chrono Trigger (gave up on the last boss of that one), and Persona 3 Portable. I actually thought I was going to make it through P3P for a while there, but after not playing it since the summer, I think I can safely say I've given up on it now. I did really enjoy the almost 50 hours I put into it, but at a certain point I was just done with dungeon running and the quality of the story was no longer enough to pull me through. I'd still say give it a shot if you're in the mood for more RPG-ing after all this.

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Wait, isn't Dragon Quest harder than the other games you mentioned? Aren't all the DQ games pretty hardcore in general? :erm:

I beat Rochard, that indie game with a gravity gun, not only that but if you reach the gravity core of that area you can make lower the gravity at will, there are also gravity reversing buttons. I'm surprised the physics never broke a single time in the game! :tup:

Some of the puzzles where pretty neat, but it's nothing that challenging if you've played physics puzzle platforms before.

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Yeah, DQ has a reputation for being fairly difficult. Whatever. I own the eighth one and plan on playing it soon. 2012 will be my year of RPGs.

Ahahaha. Can't fault you for erratic playing habits, at any rate.

Everyone tells me that the way I play games is unusual. I just tend to chase around whatever interests me. *shrug*: Hee. 12 hours into Morrowind, and I haven't even touched the main quest.

at a certain point I was just done with dungeon running and the quality of the story was no longer enough to pull me through. I'd still say give it a shot if you're in the mood for more RPG-ing after all this.

I watched my brother play through the game this summer. It wasn't for me, despite the compelling serial killer story (I love a good mystery); I did, however, enjoy parts of it. For instance, the game has more than one ending, depending on whether or not you remember a certain thing at the end. :)

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Everyone tells me that the way I play games is unusual. I just tend to chase around whatever interests me. *shrug*: Hee. 12 hours into Morrowind, and I haven't even touched the main quest.

Funny. Until I had to RMA my laptop, that's EXACTLY the way I'd been playing Skyrim. I installed Morrowind on my significantly less powerful desktop and had been thinking of booting it up. Maybe I should give it a shot.

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Funny. Until I had to RMA my laptop, that's EXACTLY the way I'd been playing Skyrim. I installed Morrowind on my significantly less powerful desktop and had been thinking of booting it up. Maybe I should give it a shot.

You should. It's great. However, you should install the necessary patches and maybe even some mods - you don't have to go with the graphical tweaks (though that certainly helps loads), but at least go with the stuff that updates the game's resolution, etc.

I ended-up using the Morrowind Graphics Extender, the Morrowind Overhaul, and then some mods of my friend's to add some spice to the game. You have to be a bit picky about mods, but most are helpful (some, like "Animated Morrowind", take a toll on your FPS, but add some life to the game; not that you need it, mind).

There's also the Morroblivion pack, but I haven't looked at that. It alters the game too much, and I don't think it lets you choose mods the way the MGE and MGO do.

I'll gladly lend you any help you need to get the game running properly. You do need to at least install the patches so it doesn't crash like a drunken pilot's first trip on a Boeing.

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I finished Final Fantasy IX maybe a week or so ago. 40 hours, spread over a little under a year.

Overall, I'd say it was pretty to look at, enjoyable, and ultimately stupid. I don't think I have a lot of positive to say about the story or the storytelling, though I did enjoy some bits. Whatever. I'd describe the game as a "nostalgic RPG". It works best if you want to go back and try a PS1 JRPG for the sake of it. It feels like it was made for nostalgics, if that makes sense - though this marks the first time I've ever seen an RPG to some sort of completion, and consequently the first time I ever finish a Final Fantasy game, it feels like a retrospective of all the PS1-era RPGs.

Decent game. I recommend giving it a shot if you can.

I really liked the opening idea for the story: A bandit decides to hold the corrupt King's daughter for ransom, only to discover, when he finally breaks into the castle, that she's trying to escape, and immediately asks for assistance in doing so before he can get a word in.

Seemed like a great dynamic for a fantasy tale: Strong and capable princess sets out to take down a corrupt regime that she's supposedly part of, taking a group of bandits who were going to kidnap her, and turning them into Big Damn Heroes.

I know I'm in a minority here, but I love Final Fantasy games. I've played a good portion of them through to completion, although not IX. To me they're Bugs Bunny to Zelda's Mickey Mouse.

You're right about it returning to its roots, too. After the huge success of FVII in the west, FFVIII was designed to tackle the complaints that the West had about it, and hopefully be even bigger than its predecessor: It was too Japanese for Westerners (cartoony, weird, cutesy, silly, etc, don't go down well here).

So VIII was extremely Westernized, going against the long history of the games: Everyone looked VERY human, and not at all cartoony. The plot and characters were far more serious and dour than they've ever been in the FF series.

After VIII wasn't the earth-shattering success in the West, it seems like there was a reaction to having had to change the series for hopes of a bigger audience, and so they went right back to making something they wanted to, the West be damned. I've no idea if that's the actual reason for the sudden shift away from the "realistic" and over-serious VIII, but IX felt both like a two-finger salute to the West, and joyous expression of Japanese sensibilities to me.

"You don't like cutesy anime? You don't like silly character moments in your stories? You don't like whimsical, magical world's where everything isn't explained? Tough. We LOVE those things."

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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That's a nice take on it, Thunderpeel. What I've seen from IX seemed very magical indeed with nice character designs and fairytale sensibilities. There was a cross-promotion with Coca-Cola during its launch which lead to a beautiful TV ad (especially at the time):

jsFFlyC4i64

It's really FF7 that gave me a hugely troubled relationship with the franchise, and the genre as a whole. It was the first JRPG I played and as such I stumbled over every single goddamn weird design choice stratified in that fucked-up genre. The games I played after that went down a lot better, so it wasn't entirely FF7's fault, it was just the sacrifical lamb. But I still find those types of games rather hard to digest, if only because they're tediously long and overwrought a lot of the time.

At the moment I'm engaged in a huge playthrough of Tales of Vesperia on the PS3 with a friend. We play a couple of hours every month. It's a game+ situation, so basically I can just waltz through the fights, don't have to grind, and enjoy the lighthearted story and fun character dynamics. Yeah, it's a JRPG with lots of wonky dialogue and buckets of clichés, but I am enjoying it for what it is. It'll never be my favourite genre, but under the right circumstances I am susceptible to finding it very charming indeed.

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Finished Morrowind last night. They sure made games different 10 years ago, no waypoints, tutorials, on screen hints, checkpoints or quest markers, just text... lots of text. Going through just the main quest takes a while, (50+ hours on my Steam, with a bit of mage guild sidequests) and it was rather monotonous with all the travelling.

Looking at the game start now was weird too, a long scripted segment with unique voice overs and content. After that it's 50 hours of running around with the same canned NPC barks until the end when there are a few lines from the end boss and a short cut scene.

Still an amazing game, so much content and so many ways to approach it. As a mage wizard guy there were some interesting solutions to some of the quests. Like a big fight in the Vivec arena against a boss, since he was melee only I just levitated out of reach and just wore him down. Felt a little like cheating, don't know if that was intended for or not, felt like that for a a lot of fights really. Enemies would be confused by pathfinding and geometry. Those round half and half dungeon doors did more to save Vvardenfell than I did I think.

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After that it's 50 hours of running around with the same canned NPC barks until the end when there are a few lines from the end boss and a short cut scene.

The LGNPC mod does wonders for that.

I'm like 15 hours into the game now. Heeeya.

I really liked the opening idea for the story: A bandit decides to hold the corrupt King's daughter for ransom, only to discover, when he finally breaks into the castle, that she's trying to escape, and immediately asks for assistance in doing so before he can get a word in.

Seemed like a great dynamic for a fantasy tale: Strong and capable princess sets out to take down a corrupt regime that she's supposedly part of, taking a group of bandits who were going to kidnap her, and turning them into Big Damn Heroes.

It is a good idea, but the problem is that the game forgets this part of the way through and turns princess Garnet/Dagger into a hapless, clumsy damsel. Assuming we ignore logic and are fine with the ending

(where the queen runs down to the crowd to hug her beloved former kidnapper and current love interest, who happens to be the chosen destructor from another planet)

, the game simply loses its idea of fun and starts itself seriously. At one point,

she gets so consumed by grief she stops talking

.

However, like you said, the game does start out really cutesy and fun. The way they brought all the characters together to begin their journey was an especially nice touch.

I know I'm in a minority here, but I love Final Fantasy games. I've played a good portion of them through to completion, although not IX. To me they're Bugs Bunny to Zelda's Mickey Mouse.

I suppose I've always loved the idea more than the games themselves - there's something in the beautiful preludes that hints at a mystical, mythological adventure of supreme importance that the games themselves have often failed to deliver on. I have, however, bought a sizeable number of them, and plan on finishing them all (I, II, IV, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, XIII, and Tactics; I'm planning on getting III, V and VI at some point). There's something about the earnest clumsiness those games have that keeps bringing me back to them, despite my reservations.

"You don't like cutesy anime? You don't like silly character moments in your stories? You don't like whimsical, magical world's where everything isn't explained? Tough. We LOVE those things."

I mostly like them too - I just kind of wish the game didn't get so serious halfway through. Whatever, I guess. There was still a charm there, with the music, art and exaggerated animation, and on the whole I did end-up liking the game. It does have one of my favourite game soundtracks. For and

.

Your comments about FFVIII worry me a bit, but I'm sure I'll find something to like in that one too. :)

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Still an amazing game, so much content and so many ways to approach it. As a mage wizard guy there were some interesting solutions to some of the quests. Like a big fight in the Vivec arena against a boss, since he was melee only I just levitated out of reach and just wore him down. Felt a little like cheating, don't know if that was intended for or not, felt like that for a a lot of fights really.

Hilariously, even without levitation you can simply take the door up to the crowd area/stands and rain spells/arrows down on both of the potential fights in the Vivec arena.

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Haha. That Coke commercial really sums up the vibe of the game.

I mostly like them too - I just kind of wish the game didn't get so serious halfway through. Whatever, I guess. There was still a charm there, with the music, art and exaggerated animation, and on the whole I did end-up liking the game. It does have one of my favourite game soundtracks. For and
.

Your comments about FFVIII worry me a bit, but I'm sure I'll find something to like in that one too. :)

Damn. Well, as I say, I've not played IX to completion, so I didn't realise that it lost its footing halfway through. That's a shame :( I don't mind a bit of melodramatics in my JRPGs, so maybe it won't bother me that much.

I think even with VIII (which I've also not played to completion) you'll always have the cool design, music, and world. I bet it's fairly decent, just unnecessarily "Westernized".

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I just beat Sonic Generations and... I'm kinda disappointed in a way.

I'm disappointed that finally the Sonic "fans" claim that Sonic team has finally made a decent game for once and it's literally a "best of", I'm no Sonic expert, but some levels are practically just HD ports of older levels. I'm not kidding! Specially when I'm playing the 3D ones I can remember the sections vividly from the original game.

The bosses are just ported from older games too, they just have a final form which is different.

Of course, the music is just remixes of older Sonic games too....

I'd hate to say it, but this is kinda lazy. Where are the Pixar quality cut scenes? This is the first modern Sonic game that didn't have one (well, not counting Sonic 4), did they simply not have time to make one?

Anyway, I'm rambling, the game is great, but that's because you're playing the greatest levels from older Sonic games, although they just had to include an level from Sonic 2006, which happens to be the most annoying level in the whole game. Sonic controls are well as he's even handled, but the levels are built better. It's a must have for Sonic fans, and the only game they could have made for Sonic's anniversary that would have pleased the crowd, I just hope they don't make another Sonic Generations... at least not until his 30th anniversary?

I'll shut up now.... :getmecoat

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That's sounds pretty good to me actually, since I have not completed a single Sonic game yet. I'm glad that I bought this one.

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Like I said, it's a great game, but it's sad that it's just "Sonic Remix" and that's pleasing the crowd. Although if you haven't played a single Sonic game in the last few year you might catch some of the jokes.

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