Messages

76

TalkBack / Re: Blaster Master Sequel Headed to WiiWare

« on: February 07, 2010, 10:17:31 AM »

this is pretty cool i might actually buy this. I heard the NES game is super hard so I hope the Wiiware game is more bearable.

I never could beat this game when I was younger, and I'm I'm in the upper echelon of gamers skill-wise.  I finally got a used cartridge (never owned it) and sat down and beat it a couple of years ago.  I beat the last boss with the last life of my last continue.

For a brand new game, I hope it has unlimited continues and I also hope they improve the weapon system (a more metroid like system would be fantastic).  We'll see though... I'll take what I can get.  Hope the music can stand up with the original.

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General Gaming / Re: Torchlight

« on: February 04, 2010, 03:38:44 PM »

The problem Torchlight has is that I'd rather be playing Diablo 2.

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General Gaming / Re: Torchlight

« on: February 03, 2010, 01:06:09 PM »

Diablo II with the Lord of Destruction expansion pack is, without a doubt, the best hack-n-slash game there is.

Truly, the more I think about it the more I loathe Torchlight and wish I had encountered an honest review before spending money on it.  It copies Diablo II on a superficial level, but the end result is junk.  Diablo's story may not be the greatest, but it's so ridiculously deep that I can't even come close to absorbing it all.  When I run into a character, I just known that somewhere there is a 10 page backstory.  The world just seems so much more alive.  Then there is the music.  Diablo 2's music was just incredible and it went a long way toward defining the world and atmosphere.  Torchlight's music sounds like a Diablo 2 remix which is just wrong on so many levels.  It doesn't fit the art style at all and it sounds essentially like D2's music was ripped out and stuffed in Torchlight (I understand it's the same composer, but you think they could have had him do original work for the game).

Then there is the interface.  It's hard to see things, the mouse doesn't cover the screen well or with good accuracy due to higher resolutions and the size of the mouse pointer and the combat just isn't satisfying.  The new inventory where everything takes up the same amount of space just encourages hoarding giant piles of useless junk for selling to the shops.  In Diablo 2 it was always a good thing to get past the first part of the game where you had to pick up every piece of junk to sell it for cash.

Finally, the sound effects just aren't there.  Diablo 2 had very satisfying effects for killing monsters and all the rest.  It helped give a visceral action-like feel to a game that is ultimately point and click.

The one good thing I can say about Torchlight is that I like the gem system where you can retrieve either the gem or the item by destroying one or the other.  That has potential.

Again, I hope they're smart enough (or relentless enough) to get Diablo 3 right.

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TalkBack / Re: Bloober Executive Says \

« on: February 03, 2010, 12:54:42 PM »

Wii game's aren't going to sell to core gamers because we can get better games with better graphics on the 360 and PS3.  For a Wii game intended for core gamers to sell really well to multi-console owning "core" gamers, it can't be merely "great for a Wii game".  It has to compete with the 360 and PS3 and that includes graphics so you developers and publishers better start looking for some Metroid Prime caliber artists.

For me the graphic aren't as important.  But the "better games" part of it is what turns me off of Wii third party games.  Nothing seems like a really serious effort.  It all seems like someone told the B-team to "make something for the Wii audience".  On the other consoles you get games where you can tell the developer has their top guys working on it and the whole thing is a labour of love.  You can tell that the goal is to make one of the greatest games ever.  Serious effort is made on the gameplay, controls, level design, graphics, art style, music, story and just overall presentation.  The Wii it's just like "pound out whatever".  Core gamers aren't interested in half-assed attempts.  We want those GOTY types of games and when a third party only makes those games on the other consoles you just develop this "eh, **** 'em" indifference to them.
 
Super Mario Galaxy, SSB Brawl and Metroid Prime 3 seem like FULL efforts.  They have that "go for broke and make the best game EVER" ambitious design, regardless of whether you think they actually acheived that.  Not every game has to be like that.  I think Nintendo very noticably cuts corners these days and even an amazing game like NSMB Wii doesn't come across as very ambitious.  But at least Nintendo has made that sort of game on the Wii.  When a third party have never even made an attempt to do such a thing how can their support be taken seriously?  It comes across like the Wii is not a priority for them so core gamers might as well stick to the other consoles and just use their Wii as their Nintendo machine.
 
The effort I think is the key thing and you can put in that kind of effort on the Wii even without HD graphics.  The best games always made exceptional use of the hardware they were "stuck" with.  There was always something better be it arcades, PCs or some high-powered but obscure console.  Square could have made Final Fantasy VI on the 3DO and thus have FMV and CD-quality music and a lot of the bells of whistles they later had in FFVII.  But instead they used the "inferior" SNES with it's chip sound, cartridge format, and slow CPU but still busted out an amazing game that pushes the console to its limits.  Despite the limitations they went for broke and knocked the ball out of the park.  Nobody does that on the Wii, except Nintendo (sometimes), and then they wonder why after 20 years of being conditioned to favour these types of games we don't buy Wii games and instead focus on the 2nd and 3rd place consoles that contain those types of games.

Exactly,  I'm a little late with this reply, but that's what I mean.  If a Wii game is *really* good, it's going to have good graphics and art direction in addition to good gameplay.  Poor graphics in a Wii game are a symptom of the larger problem that the publishers or developers don't really care.  By pitching the Wii to a huge non-core audience and neutering its hadware, Nintendo all but guaranteed that most games made for it would be junk.  Nintendo is interested in expanding its audience to include core gamers, by why would 3rd parties be interested in doing charity work for Nintendo when they can just milk the non-core base with little effort.

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TalkBack / Re: Dragon Quest VI Debuts Big in Japan

« on: February 03, 2010, 12:44:10 PM »

Finally it's released somewhere at least.  I want this more than DQ9.  I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed DQV despite its age and non-familiarity.  I enjoyed it far more than the DQIV remake.  Hooray for novelty.

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TalkBack / Re: Red Steel 2 Sales Projections Halved

« on: January 19, 2010, 04:50:34 PM »

I imagine swinging the wii-mote around like a sword and my first thought isn't "cool!" it's "ow my wrists".

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TalkBack / Re: Bloober Executive Says

« on: January 19, 2010, 04:47:59 PM »

Wii game's aren't going to sell to core gamers because we can get better games with better graphics on the 360 and PS3.  For a Wii game intended for core gamers to sell really well to multi-console owning "core" gamers, it can't be merely "great for a Wii game".  It has to compete with the 360 and PS3 and that includes graphics so you developers and publishers better start looking for some Metroid Prime caliber artists.

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General Gaming / Re: "Green" Game Cases...

« on: December 30, 2009, 07:52:59 PM »

I  hate these cases.

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TalkBack / Re: Ogre Battle 64 Headed to Virtual Console in Japan

« on: December 30, 2009, 07:47:36 PM »

This is the first game I ever tried to write a review for.  I think I submitted it to PN2k back in the day to help get me hired.

I still own my copy and have been contemplating a replay of the original.  Perhaps I should replay this one instead.

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TalkBack / Re: Wii Need Meaningful Achievements!

« on: December 18, 2009, 03:31:00 PM »

Do we really need achievements?  Whatever happened to just playing a game?  I wish you could toggle the in-game achievement displays off.  While I do enjoy them in some games and I kinda like collecting achievements on the 360, when I'm playing "The Last Guardian" (next game from the Ico/SotC team), do I really want to see trophy messages disrupting the most important moments in the story?  At least the PS3 trophy display is relatively tasteful compared to the garish 360 achievement display.

However, Microsoft and Sony do not allow suppressing the achievement messages and it's pretty clear why.  Achievements encourage people to buy and play more games, and also to buy games for a particular platform.  I'm not immune as I will prefer a 360 game to a PS3 game if all else is equal (I don't give two ***** about PS3 trophies).  It would be nice if they would at least let you suppress the achievement messages while in the game and then give you a summary of your latest achievement the next time you hit the dashboard.  It would also be nice if I had a million dollars.

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General Gaming / Re: Torchlight

« on: December 15, 2009, 04:40:52 PM »

I've had troubling staying interested in this.  With no online mode and with the game initially having difficulty settings available (so no nightmare or hell mode I guess?) it's just missing the core things that kept Diablo 2 ticking for me.  I also find that the interface is poorly designed.  It's not terrible, but I sure hope they get it much better in Diablo 3.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: RetroActive #9: Geist (Special Edition)

« on: September 22, 2009, 03:35:37 AM »

I remember liking this at E3 '05, but I couldn't get into it at when I finally brought a copy home.  Some day I'll have to give it another shot... maybe if I break my legs and end up in a bed for a few months.

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TalkBack / Re: ESRB Reveals Castlevania the Adventure ReBirth for WiiWare

« on: September 14, 2009, 11:50:33 AM »

It would be good if it was Iga.  He needs something to do, and I don't like the look (and especially the sound) of that Contra remake.  It would be interesting to see an old Castlevania game remade by Iga; whether he turned it into another Metroidvania or didn't.

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General Gaming / Re: Batman Arkham Asylum

« on: September 10, 2009, 10:48:06 AM »

I'm extremely glad they made a real game instead of an open world game.  I'm so sick of open world games.  They can be fun (as Red Faction demonstrated), but get old so quickly and easily compared to a real game with real levels.

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TalkBack / Re: DSi Retail Games to be Released This Fall?

« on: September 05, 2009, 01:17:59 PM »

I'm kinda hoping that Nintendo doesn't release a full fledged successor to the DS any time soon.  I like the way that 3D graphics aren't emphasized on the DS.  They're there, but plenty of developers still make 2D games.

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TalkBack / Re: Contra Rebirth Comes to WiiWare Next Week

« on: September 05, 2009, 01:12:09 PM »

The brief sample of the music didn't impress me much.  It sounds almost like a hi-fi version of the crap that came out of the arcade cabinet.  That might sound like a good idea in theory, but in practice it's closer to ear torture.

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General Gaming / Re: Bionic Commando

« on: August 26, 2009, 03:49:52 PM »

nope.  I just watched some videos and it doesn't look very fluid.

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General Gaming / Re: Perfect Dark Arcade

« on: August 26, 2009, 12:21:54 PM »

Oh yeah, I remember that vaguely. 

I'm trying to remember if that Bond game that ripped of Goldeneye heavily and came in a blue cartridge had the feature as well.  I don't think it did.  It replaced the look up/down on the C buttons with jump and duck (whereas GE had no jump and duck was something weird like hold the reload button and press down).

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General Gaming / Re: Shadow Complex (XBLA)

« on: August 26, 2009, 12:16:01 PM »

This game is nothing compared to Super Metroid, but SM was one of the greatest 2D adventures of all time, so don't let that stop you from playing it.  It's a very solid game that will appeal strongly to those who like the Metroid and Metroidvania games.  Note: I've beaten the game and also completed the 4% run.

This game does rip off SM a lot, but it's more interesting for what it does differently.  The 2.5D is easily the best I've ever seen.  The story presentation added into the game is far stronger because of the ultimately 3D nature of the environments.  The game even puts enemies into the backgrounds and lets you fight them.  You aim with the right analog stick with complete freedom in 360 degrees.  If your laser sight, which normally stays in the left/right plane, crosses an enemy in the background, you aim into the background.  It can be a bit disorienting, but it's manageable especially on easy or normal difficulty.  I'm extremely interested to see what Nintendo does with Metroid Other M in response to this.

Let's see... what else is different.  There is a general stealth aspect to the game.  It's not needed in the easier modes, but in insane difficulty, you'd be crazy to just rush into a room and start shooting.  Like in an FPS, enemies don't know you're there until they see you.  You can get up behind someone and do a stealth/melee kill and then go back into hiding.  I really need to replay it on Insane mode... except...

Finally, the game has an unusual system where you gain experience points for various things (killing, exploring and picking up items), but each level grants you a specific bonus of some kind (like increased accuracy or stamina (defense?)) instead of a general increase to all stats.  The stranger thing is that once you've beaten the game once, any time you restart a new game after that you retain your experience level.  If you wanted to try a fresh level 0 run on insane difficulty, you'd have to start a new gamer profile or else delete your save file from the 360 system menu.  That would probably be *really* difficult.  Insane mode is probably there to continue challenging people replaying the game with a high level of experience.

All in all, a very cool game and well worth the 15 bucks.

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General Gaming / Re: Bionic Commando

« on: August 26, 2009, 12:01:22 PM »

Personally, I prefer the original BC over the remake, and the new 3D game over either of them.  The original BC is fun and nostalgic, but the sense of pure gameplay adrenaline I get from swinging around in the new game is just unparalleled in any game I've ever played. 

The main reason the new one is so much fun for me is that the swinging has just the right amount of control mixed with automatic behavior.  If you fail in a swing, you usually just end up on the ground, or end up dangling like a fool (rather than dead).  This is enough of a penalty to make it really rewarding when you get it right and swing with authority (which happens more and more as you increase your skills).  Contrast this with Prototype which lets you run up walls and glide and generally act like a bad ass.  It's empowering and fun (and far more accessible), but I never get the same sense of awesomeness as I get in Bionic Commando because they is almost zero consequence for making a mistake (which is a good thing, because the controls aren't precise enough in Prototype).

Very few games give you a unique way to move around, so I'm willing to cut the rest of a game some slack if they do something like BC did and really nail it.

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General Gaming / Re: Perfect Dark Arcade

« on: August 26, 2009, 11:44:37 AM »

Goldeneye will never again see the light of day. Nintendo still hold some publishing rights over the game and there's no way they'll allow it to be released on a Microsoft platform. Plus, Rare would have to pay to use the Bond license once again.

Both Goldeneye and Perfect Dark already have a dual-analogue control setting which can be achieved using two controllers. I haven't ever found a single person who used this setup, but still, it was there. It's a novel idea and the only game I know of which allowed the use of two controllers for one player.

I started using it way back in Goldeneye and continued using it with Perfect Dark.  I hated having to switch down to one controller in multiplayer.

If I'm not mistaken, I can literally go back today and play this game the way FPS's are played now days (move on the left stick look on the right stick.... wait of course you can because you can just swap the controllers into different hands as long as the fire and aim buttons end up in the right spot).

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General Gaming / Re: Good Bye Microsoft

« on: August 26, 2009, 11:36:08 AM »

What do you play the thing 24 hours a day?

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General Gaming / Re: Bionic Commando

« on: August 24, 2009, 10:24:40 AM »

lol finally a studio that deserved to go under does. GRIN was pathetic and I hope their character designer never finds another job in this or any other industry.

Yes that's kind of retarded, but it least they didn't make him generic, almost-shaved-bald, tough-guy number 1038.  They tried to do something a little different.

Also, I wonder how many people who are declaring them pathetic actually played any of their games (particularly the ones they gave a **** about such as either Bionic Commando.. including the console game not just the XBLA).  Also, to say that rearmed was just a fresh coat of paint is understating things significantly.

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General Gaming / Re: The "Game Overthinker" Thread

« on: August 14, 2009, 10:11:22 AM »

I agree, the Sonic Episodes were probably the best.

Overall though, I think I prefer yahzee by a great margin if only because Yahtzee shares my general hatred toward Nintendo's new strategy whereas Mr. Overthinker is an apologetic for it.

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General Gaming / Re: The "Game Overthinker" Thread

« on: August 13, 2009, 09:27:03 PM »

I find it rather ridiculous that with all his bluster he never points out that the developers of Bionic Commando were stupid enough to map movement to the right analog stick and movement to the left analog stick, which is contrary to just about every game ever made on a dual-stick console.  I like the Overthinker and I think he made some valid points (like why should there be an "evade" button when you can simply just get out of the way with movement?), but this video just felt like a lot of nostalgic whining about "how much better we all were back in the good ol' days."  The problem isn't that there are a lot of functions now mapped to a lot of buttons, but that they can be mapped in such a way that it's not intuitive to use them.  Clearly Bionic Commando doesn't do that.  As for the "jump" button in Bionic Commando, it's there because people mocked the original game for you not being able to jump.  Maybe it could have worked with auto-jumping, maybe not.

Maybe that's because he screwed up the labeling.  In Bionic Commando just like any other first or third person action game with shooting, you control aiming with the right analog stick and movement with the left.

Also, this was his worst video period.  I actually enjoyed the previous 25, but I found this bad.  He spends too much time ripping on a game he obviously knows very little about.

I also hate his idea that anyone who enjoys complex controls wants to shut out simpletons who can't adjust.  I like complex controls because they give me more freedom and control over the game.  There is a time and place for simplifying controls (such as Zelda's auto-jump and Prime's single analog control with lock on targeting), but overall I prefer the freedom afforded by complex control schemes (within reason).

Bionic Commando was great as is.  You really only used the L trigger and two face buttons (dodging, looking and weak punches were used .... almost never... and it would be easy to beat the game without touching them) along with the standard looking, moving and shooting controls.