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Steamworld Dig on 3DS. I'm not using that word but it's a bit like those Metroid or Castlevania games where you unlock powers to reach the previously inaccessible and explore and so on except you're a cute wee robot man with a pickaxe. It's excellent.

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Steamworld Dig on 3DS. I'm not using that word but it's a bit like those Metroid or Castlevania games where you unlock powers to reach the previously inaccessible and explore and so on except you're a cute wee robot man with a pickaxe. It's excellent.

I'm curious about this game, can you say anything else about it?

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I'm curious about this game, can you say anything else about it?

 

I can try, although I don't write well which is why I usually don't bother.

 

I bought this mainly off the back of universally positive tweets following release and the video on the eShop (2D videos on the eShop, whyyyyyyy) made it look like a very pretty late SNES game which is entirely my bag so I took a chance. You play as a wee, steam-powered robot miner who inherits a claim in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere. There are a handful of residents for you to interact with and some semblance of story but the dialogue is mercifully minimal and quite amusing for what it is. The meat of the game is in the diggin'. You start digging this mine while a map on the lower screen marks out your next objective, along the way you will encounter enemies and ores, the latter of which can be sold to a character on the surface to buy health upgrades, bigger bags, better picks etc. The freedom is pretty amazing - there are very few areas it prevents you from digging through and whilst you're always heading down the route you can take is entirely up to you. The marked objective is a cave where it becomes a bit more like a traditional platformer, with added digging, and you will likely earn some kind of new skill or tool to aid overall progress in the accepted Metroid style, however in the main mine area there are also other bonus caves that have sweet loot in them you might discover.

 

Where it clicked for me was after about an hour and a half of this it stopped putting the red objective marker on the map and gave me the following simple instruction to proceed - "explore the depths". I did and spent the best part of an hour just digging, scrapping and mining around this increasingly hostile environment not really sure where I was going, convinced myself a few times I'd gone too deep, then finally found my next objective. The sense of relief and feeling of achievement when I got there was something else, the area is HUGE yet it cleverly funnels you toward the next critical location without feeling like it's doing it. Every time you pick it up you make some progress and you're never at a loss for where to go - down -  so it never becomes frustrating working out what you need to do next, it's a great-looking game with some lovely use of parallax scrolling in a fairly subtle 3D and offers 4-5 hours entertainment for the price of a cinema ticket. You can keep exploring once you've finished and apparently it introduces different enemies and upgrades when you do although I haven't tried.

 

Best eShop game since Crimson Shroud/10.

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Nice. that sounds like a really good Miner, Dig Deep type game.

 

After owning it basically since launch, I just finally "beat" Dungeons of Dredmor on Medium difficulty with permadeth and without the extra five floors from Diggle Gods. As much as I've liked puttering around in the first few floors of that before, man this turned into a slog. I lucked out on a pretty good build but it was still slow going, despite pushing aside my completionist tendancies and skipping whole halves of floors sometimes. All told, it took me around 8 hours to get through it and man, if I'd died on the final boss (who has about 5 times as much life as any other enemy as well as a ton of damage resistances) after all that time, I'd have been pretty pissed. If I were to do it again I'd either turn off permadeth or turn on the smaller floors functionality, but I think I'm pretty much done.

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Bioshock Infinite.

I didn't particularly enjoy. Too much uncanny valley. Too much suicide (including with a baseball bat). I found the arena battles difficult to parse for some reason, but Elizabeth often meant I could just sit and wait for ammo and health to appear.

Beyond the setting/atmosphere, Elizabeth and the Letuce family (singular person dlc reveal?) I'm not sure why it got the oodles of praise it did. I understand at the i'm not a triple A audience and I place more emphasis on mechanics than a lot of people, but calling it a flawed gem would give hope to cubic zirconias everywhere, so I shalln't.

Also I killed one boss in rogue legacy. Woo.

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Far Cry 3: I really enjoyed a lot of this game, though it seems like the bulk of the effort was spent on the first 2/3s. The missions were more dynamic, and the wildlife was more active, though I really enjoyed the verticality of the 2nd island both for driving, and wingsuit jumping. I wish there was more explicit in game acknowledgement that I did everything. I'm surprised there wasn't an achievement or a weapon or something at the ends of most of the lines.  The narrative is pretty absurd, and even if I were going along with it the final encounters with Vaas & Hoyt don't make any sense. They both start with you in a guaranteed losing position and then just gloss over that, even though it all happens via QTEs and cinemas. 

 

Limbo: Totally wonderful, and it's so minor, but I loved the way it just silently switches to the credits at the end. Reminds me of old Janus films or something. Really beautiful. 

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Last night I got the "get over 200,000 points in a song with all the notes invisible" achievement in Rocksmith. Technically, there is still the last half of the highest rank to get as well as the "play an entire set from memory (but get whatever score. It's ok)" achievement, but if there were a moment in this game where ROLL CREDITS could appear, that would be an appropriate time. I'm far, FAR from done with this thing, and 2014 is due out soon too, but I'm incredibly happy with that event. Going from last summer's "I still have these two guitars from when I was a teenager. I should really either learn to play them or sell them." to today's "holy shit, this guitar instruction program can just tell me to get a high score from memory and I nail it" is something I feel great about. That, and the guitarcade mini-games are actually teaching me something about technique and theory. From little things like showing me that the reason that tremolos were always such a huge pain in the ass for me could be fixed by a small adjustment in the way I held a pick to turning scale practice into a high-score drill chase. Man, this game. Dear everybody: It's great.

 

 

Also, for my own pride, I should point out that this is far from the first song I've had the chance to do this with, but it is the first one that I've bothered to try it with. The other ones are super easy and didn't really do much for me, but this one actually required enough from me that it remained fun to keep playing long enough that this was something I wanted to do, not just something I COULD do.

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Since I was away for a trip I stockpiled a bunch of PSP, PSOne, Vita and 3DS games for it and here a brief summary of the games I beat while I was away.

 

Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale: Say what you want, but I had a blast beating story mode with Ratchet, I have no idea who the final boss is supposed to be though...

Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom: I had no idea it had this many characters and I had forgotten how awesome these kind of game can be... even if the final boss is broken, like always.

40 Winks: It's a collectathon like Banjo-Kazooie that I had never heard of before and it's pretty decent. Instead of gaining new powers you find boxes that grant you powers for a short period of time.

 

The most interesting thing about this game is the cutscenes, the ones with the main characters look... OK? But the ones with the main villain and his side-kick look almost Pixar good. It's very strange, but I assume different people worked on each one.

 

Y''s Seven: What the...?! Since when is Y's about having a party? I didn't like the party system in this entry, but it's still a pretty good JRPG, a JRPG that was shorter than any "AAA" game I've played recently, which really has to make you think about game's length nowadays.

 

Superfrog HD: What? I had nostalgia for the Amiga game, OK? Frankly, it's a pretty lazy remake, the intro is still images while I remember the original being an animation, the fact that you can continue does make it less frustrating.

 

TOMBA!: It's still as amazing as I remember, but also easier than I remember? I had way too many lives near the end and catching the pigs was relatively painless.

 

Earth Defense Force Portable: Better than the original for the simple fact of having an extra character with a jetpack that makes moving through the map much quicker and her weapons are so hilariously sci-fi it's great, the only downside is that you have to beat the game normally to get her.

 

Epic Mickey 2: I never played the original game, so I only know that the co-op option is new, while I loved the visuals and I had a trip down nostalgia lane fighting evil Herbie bots and things from rides that probably no longer exist.... the AI partner is probably the worst I've even seen.

 

Oswald seems to get stuck because his path detection thinks I "thinned" the item he's trying to walk through, when you reach a dreaded "you both must do something at the same time" it's like herding kittens.

 

I also didn't think the "moral choice" system worked well in this game, it seems you can be the savior or destroyer of the land, but I can never tell when or why some actions are "wrong", it's usually the more destructive path the wrong one, but sometimes it's not clear or doesn't make sense. I was locked out of the final store with it's upgrades because it insists that the pearl I found was stolen from them.. What? Unless I missed something I have no idea what he's talking about. 

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Dishonored - Really enjoyed it. Tried to not game the systems to much and just went with what felt natural. Ended up being a very nice hybrid of stealth and action.

XCom - Great game. I've only played one so far where I ended up losing horribly, but that made it no less enjoyable.

Bioshock Infinite: Beautiful and a lot of fun, but was also too long and lacked almost any kind of subtlety.

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I made my first foray into the Metroid series and boy was it a doozy. I've owned every Metroid game for years, but just now is the guilt really starting to get to me. So I picked up and played the shit out of Zero Mission. Really my first run was the only enjoyable and real experience because I found up to 95% of the items all by myself and topped it off to 100% within the spectacularly bad time of 9 hours and 30 minutes. I also spent a couple of those hours incredibly frustrated with trying to do tricky shine sparking maneuvers to get the remaining items. Figuring out what to press and getting the hang of the timing of an ability that is not written anywhere in the manual was such a chore the first time.

 

After that I felt determined to unlock the complete ending gallery for Zero Mission, so I went through the game four more times for all 8 endings (copying saves near the end to get a few of the variable endings). The 100% normal and hard runs under 2 hours, I completely used a guide, since there's no way I could figure out how to get 100 items in the most efficient order in that time limit. I had to keep learning each section from one save point to the next and practicing my time until I could confirm my run for that section was quick enough. Then the 15% run on normal was incredibly simple and I did not have much trouble. Hard mode 15% run wasn't even that much worse, just had to read some tips and check out the cheap ass way of killing mother brain. While it feels satisfying to have unlocked the complete gallery, I am relieved to know in all later Metroids that there are no low percent run requirements and the endings are either sorted out by getting 100% or beating the game fast enough, meaning 3 playthroughs at the most (Although from what I'm seeing a good 100% playthrough for all the 3D games is all that is required).

 

Also I went ahead and played the NES Metroid since it was on the Zero Mission cart and didn't really have much fun. I never knew anyone who owned Metroid on NES growing up and so I somehow just completely missed anything about the game. The NES one wore on my patience and I just started using a map to tell me the general area of the items because I kept running in to copied rooms and the game was completely barren in general with many areas and secrets leading to nothing. It just didn't have the same feel of the first Legend of Zelda, released the same year, where the area was jam packed with secrets in well defined areas requiring revisits with upgrades to come collect the prize. I was a bit disappointed since Zero Mission did that and later Metroids become similar to Zelda in that respect. Also the game had really silly easy bosses with terrible AI (if any at all) and the only hard aspect seemed to be tediously collecting energy upon reloading your save. I just stopped turning off my GBA and left it on sleep mode so I wouldn't have to go through that shit again. After my first ending, which was somewhere between 3 and 5 hours, I used passwords online to start at Tourian to see the other endings. Samus in string bikini woo! Here's to hoping Metroid II is much better, because I honestly can't believe Nintendo continued with the franchise after that one. I have never finished Kid Icarus NES but I'm assuming it was more tightly designed based on what I remember, but the other 9-bit franchises from Nintendo all started with very strong games.

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Link's Awakening DX. First 2D Zelda game I've ever played (I completed Ocarina way back and played varying amounts of Twilight Princess and Wind Waker since) and holy shit what a game. I wasn't expecting much and think I only bought it back in November when I first got my 3DS for the novelty of it, never started it until last week, but for a game as old as that and on such limited hardware it packs so much in. There are exactly three things wrong with it, in increasing order of severity:

 

1) The text prompts. Due to the low resolution they can only fit a small amount of text on screen at once so scrolling through spoken or descriptive passages is a pain. It's forgiveable though as they had no way around it, what I don't forgive is the need to give me a notification every time I pick up an acorn or a power thing, or touch an ice block or a green block. Arghhhh.

 

2) The GameBoy only had two buttons and this game lets you map any of your items or weapons to either one which is cool. Continually having to press Start to remap the items you have on each of them is tedious though, especially with the way the overworld opens up as you gain items meaning to traverse any significant distance requires numerous swaps every time. It's an unavoidable hardware limitation but it's one of the reasons I'm most keen on playing the SNES one next. Six buttons, son.

 

3)

The fetch sidequest should've been optional. I had to look that up and it felt dirty, and being so close to the end it leaves a bad taste right when I should be feeling victorious. All they had to do was have you going into the egg and fighting a boss, the maze there was unneccessary.

 

I'm going to have to be careful not to burn myself out on these but I'm very much looking forward to playing A Link to the Past soon, and Majora's Mask, and possibly even the Oracles games. And I bought Hyrule Historia this week, won Phantom Hourglass cheap on eBay and just ordered Skyward Sword. Thinking about a Wii U for Wind Waker HD too. Gah.

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2) You might be a little disappointed about how LTTP actually handles that stuff. A lot of the core pieces of equipment are considered in the control scheme, activated either contextually or through a dedicated button, but there's then only one item slot for things like the bow and the bombs.

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Saints Row 4 complete (for now at least, when some DLC comes out I'll go in and 100% the collectables.) Well worth my time, funny as hell.

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2) You might be a little disappointed about how LTTP actually handles that stuff. A lot of the core pieces of equipment are considered in the control scheme, activated either contextually or through a dedicated button, but there's then only one item slot for things like the bow and the bombs.

 

Aye, I see that now. Bit of a missed opportunity not to use L and R for something unless they come into it later.

 

Game is pretty good though! Put it on for a quick shot earlier and did about four hours of it, I never play a game for that long these days.

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Ico, after just finishing Shadow of the Colossus. It's interesting to see the evolution of the mechanics for traversal from Ico to SotC, and I adore how companionship is a theme that is carried through both games, and done very well.

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Fire Emblem Awakening

Went back and finished this off tonight. Have had the final chapter unlocked for ages but hoovering up all the side stories and streetpasses (plus Mayoral duties in ACNL) have kept me from the final showdown. I went for a no-deaths playthrough on Hard which doubled my playtime (my save file says 52 hours, but my Activity Log says 99 hours 42 minutes!) Thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing is excellent and the 3D really adds something and helps make the battlefield more readable. The fact that everyone you kill ends up coming back in a side story grated toward the end and the story got a bit shlocky (again, does anyone ever ACTUALLY die?!) but those are minor points. A fine game.

 

Thomas Was Alone

Played through this this afternoon as I continue to plough through the Humble Bundle. Towards the end I was getting strong whiffs of VVVVVV and gameplay-wise I'd had my fill by the time I'd finished. I really enjoyed the 'personalities' and how they corresponded to the blocks and their abilities, and the little farty bloop sound Chris made when he landed. I wanted some little epilogue pay-off for those characters. Hearing Danny Wallace repeat narration after I died took away from the great writing and exposed all the triggers, but it was an enjoyable 2-3 hour game.

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The only people who stay dead in Fire Emblem are the ones on your side who died by your incompetence.

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I didn't notice this post before, i want to respond to it.

 

I made my first foray into the Metroid series and boy was it a doozy. I've owned every Metroid game for years, but just now is the guilt really starting to get to me. So I picked up and played the shit out of Zero Mission. Really my first run was the only enjoyable and real experience because I found up to 95% of the items all by myself and topped it off to 100% within the spectacularly bad time of 9 hours and 30 minutes. I also spent a couple of those hours incredibly frustrated with trying to do tricky shine sparking maneuvers to get the remaining items. Figuring out what to press and getting the hang of the timing of an ability that is not written anywhere in the manual was such a chore the first time.


Zero Mission is actually the hardest game in the series to 100%, some of the expansions require some really gnarly tricks. You'll probably be surprised, going back to earlier games, to find that stuff like those shinespark tricks are never actually required for anything, they're purely there for sequence breaks and speedruns.

 

Also I went ahead and played the NES Metroid since it was on the Zero Mission cart and didn't really have much fun. I never knew anyone who owned Metroid on NES growing up and so I somehow just completely missed anything about the game. The NES one wore on my patience and I just started using a map to tell me the general area of the items because I kept running in to copied rooms and the game was completely barren in general with many areas and secrets leading to nothing. It just didn't have the same feel of the first Legend of Zelda, released the same year, where the area was jam packed with secrets in well defined areas requiring revisits with upgrades to come collect the prize. I was a bit disappointed since Zero Mission did that and later Metroids become similar to Zelda in that respect. Also the game had really silly easy bosses with terrible AI (if any at all) and the only hard aspect seemed to be tediously collecting energy upon reloading your save. I just stopped turning off my GBA and left it on sleep mode so I wouldn't have to go through that shit again. After my first ending, which was somewhere between 3 and 5 hours, I used passwords online to start at Tourian to see the other endings. Samus in string bikini woo! Here's to hoping Metroid II is much better, because I honestly can't believe Nintendo continued with the franchise after that one. I have never finished Kid Icarus NES but I'm assuming it was more tightly designed based on what I remember, but the other 9-bit franchises from Nintendo all started with very strong games.


I have played every Metroid game and the original never really clicked for me either, it's just such a primordial-feeling game. There are clear cases to make for why it's an important game, but i don't think it holds up as something to play. (Also, i've never really spent much time with the original Kid Icarus, but most people i know who have seem to haaate it.)

Metroid 2, on the other hand, catches a lot of flak for being the odd duck of the original series, having a somewhat more linear structure, but it's a game i've always really loved. It has a ton of really moody, creepy ambient themes, and also defined a less overtly cartoonish visual aesthetic for the series. (Most of the sequels have hewn very closely to Metroid 2's designs for Samus.) It also established a lot of new items and other small, important conventions for the series, like being able to shoot downwards and having a normal crouch in addition to the morphball. (It can be jarring going back to the original game and realizing you can't hit one block tall enemies.)

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Played both Proteus and Dear Esther today.

Really enjoyed Proteus. I felt very happy just to wander, chase animals and touch the gravestones.

Dear Esther gave me tech problems which affected the experience. At first it was crashing every few minutes, then it went down to every 20 minutes. Finding the quicksave prevented me from chucking in the towel. At first the camera was disorientating. it felt very fishbowl-y and it took a good few minutes to acclimatise (or acclimate in Am Eng - something I learned from listening to the podcast). The game has convinced me that our children will all be plugged into the matrix and we may as well burn all the fossil fuels we can. I was just staring at the ground for large portions of my playthrough. You can see the cracks - the texture resolution doesn't hold up in extreme close up, and the foliage rotates towards the camera as you strafe past - but the richness and detail of the island was incredible to the point where those cracks didn't matter. Sitting a meter from the screen, there was just too much visual information to process, just as there is in reality, and that richness bamboozled my brain into submission.

In terms of the actual experience, I enjoyed Proteus more, though the crashes might have coloured Esther for me. I genuinely thought the ending was another crash. I disliked that control was taken from me at the end - really, what else would I have done? - but it was an enjoyable and thoughtful (if frustrating) couple of hours.

Humble Bundle 8 is jostling with the Orange Box for the Best Vidya Game Deal in History title.

I've just started Metroid Prime after finding the Wii Trilogy disc for a tenner. I'll persevere but scanning everything is getting old quickly. Will I miss much if I go against instinct and just run by all the scannables?

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I've just started Metroid Prime after finding the Wii Trilogy disc for a tenner. I'll persevere but scanning everything is getting old quickly. Will I miss much if I go against instinct and just run by all the scannables?

 

A lot of times you'll find yourself locked in a room with twenty scannables, just one of which that will open the door, so it's pretty hard to completely avoid.

Try not to feel like you have to rush through it, that game is very atmospheric, just chill out and enjoy it. (The Trilogy version of the first Metroid Prime is missing some nice visual effects, but it's still an alright version of the game.)

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