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Indeed. I sold my DS Lite in about 2008 so I'd missed a lot of great stuff for that too and it's something I'd been thinking about for a while, really glad I bought one now. If you're in Europe they come with a free game until January 15th so there's never been a better time to buy.

How are the 3DS controls? Do you use the analog stick or the d-pad?

Felt absolutely spot-on, I used the D-pad.

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Finished my 80 hour campaign as Sweden in Crusader Kings 2 of which a good 1-15 hours of having to re-load after playing for 5 hours and making game ending mistakes. My king is Emperor of Scandinavia, king of France, Bavaria, Jersulem and Lothogaria with some land in north Italy and South England. Best moment had to be getting a white peace with the Mongols instead of losing all of Finland to them and then taking Prussia from them. Started a playthough as Ireland but not real interest in continuing cause it seems kinda boring after playing a more central nation. Might play as one of the Spanish kingdoms and Byzantine cause I really like Byzantine.

Started To the Moon and installed Pathalogic

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Bleh, not getting a 3DS until A: There's a new model with far longer battery life B: The next mobile Zelda game is great r Smash Bros is out.

Anyway, played Captain Scarlett DLC for Borderlands 2. Man, FINALLY, finally they fulfill exactly what I'm sure most everyone really wanted at the end of Borderlands 1. Damn is that a lot of treasure! It was like continuously opening boxes of candy, and finding each box of candy is better than the previous. Blue blue blue, purples, purples! OMG AN ORANGE! Borderlands once again delivers among the best experience for the price in terms of DLC, now if only every other developer putting out junk DLC that lasts an hour for $15 was paying attention.

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I'll be an advocate: before I started using the 3DS I was very bothered by the battery life. Now that I've played on the thing daily for a year and a half, it's almost a non-issue to me. Whenever I've played a few hours I plug the thing in and it loads up. Big deal. Unless you actually go on long trips where you'll play for at least three hours without encountering an electrical socket, it should be a non-issue for you too.

The N64 Zelda's are being remade on the 3DS. Ocarina of Time was a great conversion and I expect good things from Majora's Mask when it comes.

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I've beaten a bunch of stuff since I last posted in this thread. It's pretty late and I've been doing a fair amount of Hanukkah drinking but I'll try and touch on everything I can actually remember.

Mark of the Ninja

Was one of my favorite games this year. I really think this is most likely the best stealth game ever created. Certainly the most accessible one. It's been said a billion times everywhere but the various UI cues provided to the player and really brilliant and made this game a total joy to play! I really felt like a Ninja darting about the environment distracting and sneaking passed guards. I loved the art style. I thought the story was good if not a little cliched. Cliche'd as it is I do find it to be cleanly executed and generally memorable.

Hotline Miami

Murdering people should not be this fun. It's absolutely criminal. I love this game. I love it.

Thirty Flights of Loving

Hey I finally played this! I'm sure this is the right place to bring this game up! I largely loved it, amazing musics (REMO!) and some cuts that actually left my mouth open. I gotta say I don't really understand ANYTHING about the last section of that game.... If anyone could provide some manner of insight.... I just don't get it......

Shank

So I bought shank on deep discount some time ago and turned my attention back towards it after finishing mark and wanting to see what else Klei had put out. I decided to play through it with some friends while drinking one night. It's actually a fairly fun side scrolling beat em up with REALLY amazingly fluid animation. There's really not much variety in it any facet. Enemy types/skins, weapons, gameplay mechanics, and the backdrops are terrible and nonsensical. I really don't feel like this is a "good" game. That awesome fluid control from mark is totally absent, as it's extreme gameplay and systems balance. But that art looks awesome and after about 4 beers it's really hard to have fun making blood come out of stuff when it looks that nice.

I picked up to the moon in the last sale and plan on going through that one tomorrow or Monday at the latest!

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I got the Alan Wake games from the recent sale, but since I played the original on the 360, I just played American Nightmare and... while I like the story and such...

Oh, do I LOATHE the combat, I don't know I should bring this to the Alan Wake thread, but seriously, it feels just wrong. Fast and "swarmy" enemies and yet you can only focus on one a time. It's like Dead Space, which thinks it's a survival horror game just because it has a horrible inventory system and Alan Wake just has very frustrating combat... The game is an asshole, whenever I try to make the enemies come to me so I can pick them off, it magically spawns an enemy behind me, the fact that the game gave more and more ridiculous weapons made me think that the whole horror was an illusion, it's not scary when you get an assault rifle and it really lost it's horror cred to me when it did just like in one of the F.E.A.R. games and had "epic music" play during certain intense combat situations.

I'm sorry, but feeling like a badass is the last thing you want to feel while playing a horror game, the epic music ruined the mood. So, I gave the game the middle finger and instead of fighting the army of enemies running towards me while epic music played, I used flares until I reached the checkpoint. :nodance:

The worst part?

THE @#$%ing time loop! THREE TIMES? THREE! TIMES! Yes, it's shorter each time, but it's also more annoying each time.

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Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS) - Really enjoyed this. I bought this at release having somehow never played a Castlevania game up to that point and didn't really take to it and sold it, I'd never played any Metroids either so the whole concept of unlocking skills to be able to re-explore earlier areas was kind of wasted on me. A wee while later I bought Symphony of the Night on XBLA on a whim and became utterly consumed by it, since then I've had a hankering to go back to the DS ones as they seem to be pretty highly rated, particularly this first one.

It's a good game. It looks fantastic - especially the animation and the bigger bosses - and the soundtrack is pretty great although people tell me it's one of the weaker entries in the series in that regard. Progression through the different areas of the castle is rapid and I didn't ever get stuck just endlessly wandering which had been a worry, there are a few simple puzzles which as a simple man made me feel pretty damn special when I worked them out without the internet. I'm so proud of me. The bosses are a mixed bag but when they work - oh my. It kept reminding me of a recent Thumbs where (and I think it might've been a talk by a Castlevania designer who was being discussed now I think of it) the topic of 2D fidelity was being discussed, in how it allows the player to gauge distance, space and inertia and react accordingly to much more complex situations than is possible in a 3D title. It's been a while since I'd played a 2D game as old-school as this, with actual bosses and stuff, and figuring out their tells, and where I was safe/not safe was a pleasant reminder of the type of stuff I grew up with albeit far more polished.

I have Portrait of Ruin here which is apparently not as good but it does have Yuzo Koshiro on the soundtrack so I'm hoping that will keep me going through the bad times.

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Awesome game! only game i've ever bothered to complete on a handheld

I only played a couple of hours of 'Portrait of Ruin' and it didn't really grab me,

Order of Ecclesia was really good though, kind of an evolution of Dawn of sorrow

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Sweet, I'll definitely be getting that one too as I'd heard it was an improvement over Portrait of Ruin. Basically I'm going to run through these three and totally burn myself out on the series in time for the 3DS game in March.

One thing that didn't work for me in Dawn of Sorrow I forgot to mention was the daft "draw a seal on the touch screen" business when you'd whittled a boss down enough, it's a really clumsy jump to be fighting a massive beastie then making an intricate pattern with a fingernail to finish it off. I failed that a few times and it's frustrating to die to something that was a pretty stupid addition to the game to begin with.

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I must weigh in here with my opinion on the handheld Castlevania series: Portrait of Ruin is excellent. Of course, anything coming from the Sorrow diptych was bound to disappoint, but it's a strong contender in my book, full of creativity and diversity. The soundtrack is extremely strong. I loved it.

Order of Ecclesia, by contrast, was much less interesting. Not for trying though: Konami attempted to return to a more 'level based' system of Castlevania, rather than an interlocking castle. The result is less than the sum of its parts, unfortunately. The disjointed levels offer nothing of the layered design of earlier titles and though the quest system is fun, the whole thing was disappointing. I'll give a go at ranking the series so far:

1. Dawn of Sorrow (I'd give Aria of Sorrow the top spot, but Dawn's appearance on the DS gave it flair)

2. Aria of Sorrow (fantastic and not to be missed if you enjoyed Dawn)

3. Portrait of Ruin (fun otherworldly painting levels, teaming up with your partner)

4. Circle of the Moon (the odd one out: a true gothic horror vibe, toned down and a lot more difficult than the later titles)

5. Harmony of Dissonance (don't let the weak soundtrack deter you, it's a fun romp with some good mysteries)

6. Order of Ecclesia (perhaps it was high expectations, but this game really didn't do it for me)

I'm sad that the series has ended for now, with the next handheld Castlevania an offshoot of the console titles and in 3D. It might be good, but, you know... 2D. I hope they'll continue this run on the 3DS with another worthy Metroidvania.

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Oh, I didn't know the 3DS one was going to be like the recent home console ones which didn't do anything for me. I've just looked up a gameplay video and kind of wished I hadn't.

I'll keep an eye out for the GBA games if I can get legit copies without spending a fortune. It's a shame that it was successful enough for Konami to give it three DS outings but not release a collection of those. I know it's not as easy as them just sticking ROMs on a cart and into a box but with the DSi and onward removing GBA compatability it puts them out of the reach of most people now.

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Here's hoping they show up in the eShop as downloadables at some point. I was lucky to collect them all as they were coming out. They had a very limited release in Europe. Let me assure you that even at the time, they were hard to find. Shame, because it's one of the stand-out series on the GBA en DS in my book.

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Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS) - Really enjoyed this. I bought this at release having somehow never played a Castlevania game up to that point and didn't really take to it and sold it, I'd never played any Metroids either so the whole concept of unlocking skills to be able to re-explore earlier areas was kind of wasted on me. A wee while later I bought Symphony of the Night on XBLA on a whim and became utterly consumed by it, since then I've had a hankering to go back to the DS ones as they seem to be pretty highly rated, particularly this first one.

I have Portrait of Ruin here which is apparently not as good but it does have Yuzo Koshiro on the soundtrack so I'm hoping that will keep me going through the bad times.

If you really like Dawn of Sorrow, you might want to contemplate trying to track down Aria of Sorrow, which Dawn sequelizes. (The GBA games are all fairly well liked as well, though Aria is generally regarded as the best. The other two are Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance.)

You won't be disappointed with Portrait of Ruin though, you definitely can't go wrong with it.

Order of Ecclesia, the third DS game, is a bit of a hybrid between "classicvania" and "metroidvania". (Essentially the 2D series before and after SOTN.) It has the progression systems of the latter, but the level design and difficulty of the former. It's a weird game, and it's seriously unforgiving, but it can be pretty cool.

Also, if you have a group you can rely on to play with, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair can be pretty fun. (This is the "HD" game on XBLA/PSN that is kind of a weird party-based time-attack loot-gathering game.)

You should also definitely check out Super Metroid. I would argue until i am out of breath that Super Metroid is one of the best games ever made. (If you go down that hole, try to check out Zero Mission too, a remake of the original Metroid that comprehensively reinvisions it.)

Regarding the upcoming 3DS Castlevania, Konami seems to have buried Koji Igarashi, the lead on most of the Castlevania series since SOTN. It looks like the rebooted MercurySteam series will be what Castlevania is from here on out. (All that Lords of Shadow stuff, which to be fair, people seem to like.)

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Oh, do I LOATHE the combat, I don't know I should bring this to the Alan Wake thread, but seriously, it feels just wrong. Fast and "swarmy" enemies and yet you can only focus on one a time. It's like Dead Space, which thinks it's a survival horror game just because it has a horrible inventory system and Alan Wake just has very frustrating combat... The game is an asshole, whenever I try to make the enemies come to me so I can pick them off, it magically spawns an enemy behind me...

Are you not picking up on the cues the game gives you? If an enemy is approaching from beyond the camera perspective, Alan glances over at it. Keep an eye on him, he's basically your monster radar. (I can't remember if he did that in the original game, I don't think he did.)

Like, i agree, American Nightmare is kind of a mess, but i didn't find it hard.

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Oh man, so many words about Castlevania :) Looking forward to Portrait of Ruin now although I think I'll play something else in the interim.

You should also definitely check out Super Metroid. I would argue until i am out of breath that Super Metroid is one of the best games ever made. (If you go down that hole, try to check out Zero Mission too, a remake of the original Metroid that comprehensively reinvisions it.)

Me and Super Metroid - About three months ago I decided to buy a Super Famicom and put together a collection of my favourite games, stuff I loved growing up and a few classics I'd missed through having no money to buy games at the time. While I was rebuying my youth I spent a decent chunk on a really nice boxed copy of Super Metroid (that box art :swoon:) and put it aside for a week off I had for my birthday in early November. I was so excited! I played about six hours one day and thought I was progressing nicely, switched it on the next day, nudged the cart and erased everything. The idea I could lose it all again like that puts me off redoing it any time soon but at some point I am going to play through this, maybe on the Wii or hopefully Nintendo will get their finger out and put SNES (and GBA pls) games on the eShop as it'd be ideal for that.

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I've been intermittently playing Metroid Fusion on my 3DS (got it in that ambassador thing) and I'm continually reminded of how much Nintendo pisses me off by not revisiting that formula for their Metroid games.

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Heh, it always made me crazy that you just see Kraid's feet dangling in the background on the North American box art.

I've been intermittently playing Metroid Fusion on my 3DS (got it in that ambassador thing) and I'm continually reminded of how much Nintendo pisses me off by not revisiting that formula for their Metroid games.

I have personally felt that, since the revival of the series, the Prime games have been leagues better than the games developed in Japan. Personally speaking, i was very disappointed with Fusion and was left totally bewildered by Other M. I will say that i think Zero Mission was pretty great, but even that has issues.

Fusion is an extremely linear Metroid game and is bogged down in interminably slow moving exposition, and Other M just magnifies that to ridiculous degrees, to which you can also add Other M's completely baffling undercurrent of sexism. Even in Zero Mission, the most dramatic addition it makes to the original game is adding an extremely linear sequence at the end of the game. (That is admittedly very creative and cool, it's a sequence that feels like it might have informed the design for a number of other 2d games.)

Yeah, but i guess what i'm saying is that if we were to get another 2D Metroid, i'm not sure it would reflect what people love about Metroid. (Unless what you love about Metroid is Fusion, i guess.)

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It's really not clear to me "what people love about Metroid". Frankly, the Prime series was never a particularly stellar seller (relative to other Nintendo franchises or big exclusives on other platforms) so I think Nintendo has a lot of room to redefine what people love about Metroid.

I just know what I love about Metroid and that is the 2D exploration aspect. I liked Metroid Prime, but I really couldn't stand the control scheme when I played Prime 3 and Prime 2 (via Trilogy). I'm going to be fiddling with Dolphin Emulator sometime soon and am quite curious about how I'll like the Prime series after playing it with a proper controller and graphical quality in parity with the environmental design.

I'm in full agreement that Fusion is linear and bogged down by the exposition, but I liked/like it nonetheless. Zero Mission and Super are most certainly better examples of 2D Metroid, but Fusion is what is currently available to me and it's been longer since I played it than the other two.

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It's really not clear to me "what people love about Metroid". Frankly, the Prime series was never a particularly stellar seller (relative to other Nintendo franchises or big exclusives on other platforms) so I think Nintendo has a lot of room to redefine what people love about Metroid.

I just feel like, at its core, it's a game about exploration. More specifically, it's that balanced combination of the lonely atmosphere, the environmental puzzle solving, and the action mechanics. I've always kind of looked at Metroid as what Zelda would be without an overworld, and i think it's completely fitting that Metroid Prime borrowed a lot of traits from the post-Ocarina games. I'm very much against the growing homogeneity of first-person games, and i loved that Metroid Prime was willing to approach the perspective from a completely different angle.

To get back on point, to me Metroid is about exploring a threatening, lonely, and well-realized place and slowly piecing it together, gradually sliding the pieces of the puzzle into place. I think Retro's Prime games do a better job of presenting that experience than Intelligent Systems' GBA games did, and certainly a better job than Team Ninja's Other M did.

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How did other folks feel about Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery? I thought it was fun and had a nice Pendleton Ward-esque appeal and a really sick style, but, eh, when I actually beat it I felt kinda lukewarm. Maybe I didn't get it. Did other people feel the same?

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How did other folks feel about Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery? I thought it was fun and had a nice Pendleton Ward-esque appeal and a really sick style, but, eh, when I actually beat it I felt kinda lukewarm. Maybe I didn't get it. Did other people feel the same?

I've played through it a couple of times. I think you're right that it goes for style over depth, but I think it's also fair to keep in mind that it was first developed as an iPad game and then ported to PC later. My biggest complaint was that there seemed to be a lot of excessive back tracking through the world. Overall I feel like I got my money's worth.

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I got the Alan Wake games from the recent sale, but since I played the original on the 360, I just played American Nightmare and... while I like the story and such...

Oh, do I LOATHE the combat, I don't know I should bring this to the Alan Wake thread, but seriously, it feels just wrong. Fast and "swarmy" enemies and yet you can only focus on one a time. It's like Dead Space, which thinks it's a survival horror game just because it has a horrible inventory system and Alan Wake just has very frustrating combat... The game is an asshole, whenever I try to make the enemies come to me so I can pick them off, it magically spawns an enemy behind me, the fact that the game gave more and more ridiculous weapons made me think that the whole horror was an illusion, it's not scary when you get an assault rifle and it really lost it's horror cred to me when it did just like in one of the F.E.A.R. games and had "epic music" play during certain intense combat situations.

I'm sorry, but feeling like a badass is the last thing you want to feel while playing a horror game, the epic music ruined the mood. So, I gave the game the middle finger and instead of fighting the army of enemies running towards me while epic music played, I used flares until I reached the checkpoint. :nodance:

The worst part?

THE @#$%ing time loop! THREE TIMES? THREE! TIMES! Yes, it's shorter each time, but it's also more annoying each time.

Huh, I really enjoyed both Alan Wake and American Nightmare. Then again, I generally don't give a shit about horror. Creepy is fine and good, but the horror movies I've really liked? The Shining, the list begins and ends there. If you're not looking for a real "horror" show though, and get your mind out of that box, then I suspect the game holds up better. It atmospheric and a bit creepy and pretty fun.

And Super Brothers? I absolutely ADORED some of it. The art direction, sound design, and etc. all feel top notch. Too bad the gameplay is rather meh a lot of the time. I absolutely COULD NOT play it using a mouse, it felt painful to even try. On a tablet it felt fine.

Also, finished the second Borderlands 2 DLC, Torgue's Campaign of Carnage. It felt smaller, shorter, and less polished than the first DLC, which was annoying. But Torgue as a character practically made up for it. The ultra angry, meaty, adhd, agressive internet type come to life, simultaneously celebrated and mocked. Imagine the "Bro do you even lift???" Internet commenter as a realized character. You murder game reviewers for disagreeing with him, get cookies, blow the hell out of shit, and he thinks it's all awesome!

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Finally played the Puzzle Agent games. Not sure how much more it could have been like Twin Peaks. The first one got by on charm and novelty, but I have to give props to the sequel for actually having fun, paced puzzles. I personally didn't think that integer sequence puzzles were a great way to start and end the game, but otherwise I thought they were handled well.

I did feel dumb on the first puzzle, because clock times were my first intuition, but then I saw the puzzle sensei holding five pencils, where there was one pencil behind his fingers, one in front, and then three behind. My first thought was, "ah-ha! It's a code! It's not hours after all, the answer is 13!" And then I was wrong.

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How did other folks feel about Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery? I thought it was fun and had a nice Pendleton Ward-esque appeal and a really sick style, but, eh, when I actually beat it I felt kinda lukewarm. Maybe I didn't get it. Did other people feel the same?

Pretty recently I went through most of that game. I love the art and the narrative style of the game. However I think there are some really bad puzzles in there where you are apparently just supposed to basically make guesses without clues from the environment.

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Just finished Crimson Shroud (3DS), did anyone else pick this up? Really unique little game. Great atmosphere and a superb turn-based combat system, with a lot more depth than I'd expected as this was kind of marketed as a simplified, short RPG (took me seven hours) heavily influenced by tabletop games. I have never rolled an octahedral die myself so I'm not really sure how similar it is but I loved this - it's downloadable and cheap (well, £7) which set my expectations at a certain level but these were promptly exceeded within the first half hour, if it looks like something you'd be vaguely interested in then you should really take the chance.

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