Messages

51

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Fragile - Namco ARPG

« on: May 16, 2010, 07:39:36 PM »

I can't believe that this game came out in Japan only last year, because it plays and feels like a Wii launch game from the crappy controls to the lack of depth and pointless mini-games.  I just completed (I guess) the section with Crow at the amusement park

Hmm, it's an unfortunate place to give up, since by far the best parts of the game start to come immediately after that (including an area where the fighting is actually fun).

It's clearly a flawed game, but there are much better bits than the amusement park...

52

General Chat / Re: iPad...meh

« on: April 19, 2010, 01:14:56 AM »

It was supposed to piss you off that the iPad is selling; you made it clear that you thought it was awful and tried your damnedest to convince everyone else of that.

Er, but "the ipad is awful" is not synonymous with "the ipad isn't selling"; given the pre-release hype, it would have been very surprising if didn't sell.

Note that I don't see any reason to think the ipad is "awful", but it seems very unlikely to live up to the hype.    The iphone is popular for some pretty good reasons -- it's stylish, simple, and does a decent job of making a "good enough" version of the internet available in a handy bring-everywhere package.  The "bring everywhere" point is extremely significant.  The ipad,  despite having many of the same limitations as the iphone (same gimped OS, etc), is not something you can just tote along without thinking, and I think that makes it far less useful to most people.  It's much more like a laptop, where you have to actually think "do i really wanna bring the laptop/ipad?"  It's fine for browsing while sitting on the couch, and that's a niche that it will no doubt do well in, but really not quite the world-changer that all the recent hyperventilation suggests...

53

General Gaming / Re: Microsoft's Project Natal

« on: April 17, 2010, 09:45:55 PM »

"Turn around, bend over and spread your cheeks"

Hmm, that procedure also has the advantage that Microsoft customers are all very used to doing it...

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General Gaming / Re: Microsoft's Project Natal

« on: April 17, 2010, 10:05:57 AM »

so i suppose in the end, it's gonna have to be "Please strip, spread your legs, and jump around a lot; be sure to squarely face the camera in your Natal® unit."

55

General Chat / Re: iPad...meh

« on: April 17, 2010, 12:03:49 AM »

So...I might be able to get a 64GB iPad 3G for $400...that, I would actually consider.

Hey, cheaper than 3 iphones duck-taped together!

56

TalkBack / Re: Sega: MadWorld a

« on: April 15, 2010, 10:11:20 AM »

Hmm, actually I kinda liked the "computer-controlled coop" in RE5...

57

General Chat / Re: What kind of car do you drive?

« on: April 13, 2010, 07:21:10 PM »

No car.

I mainly use the train (I live near Tokyo, and the train system is extremely good; only idiots use a car regularly...).

58

General Chat / Re: iPad...meh

« on: April 11, 2010, 08:00:21 PM »

I expect a lot of people also just don't take those little games seriously.  The industry has worked so hard to to make "piracy" seem so grave and serious, that there's a real cognitive dissonance associating it with goofy little 5 second games from unknown companies....

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General Chat / Re: iPad...meh

« on: April 09, 2010, 07:21:40 PM »

This is SO ridiculous. Most people here probably spend HOURS and HOURS every single day staring at LCD screens, either at work or at home. I know I'm one of them. Blogs and online news sources are hugely popular and many/most of those articles are several paragraphs long or longer. And still, I don't think I've heard a single report of someone's eyes burning out of their sockets because of how long they've been reading things on LCD screens. If you are seriously getting headaches from reading news articles on your computer, which millions of people do every day, I think there's something wrong with you. I really think all the "e-ink is the only way to read on a screen" stuff is so much marketing BS.

People read that way because they don't have much choice other than printing it all out, which really only makes sense for something you're going to spend quite a bit of time reading.

Nonetheless, many people find reading on paper far nicer than reading on a bright backlit LCD, and find the latter to be pretty annoying for any kind of lengthy reading (as opposed to frothy/short reading like blogs, forums, etc, where the dynamic nature of a computer display more than makes up for the display quality).

That isn't to say that e-ink is as good as paper -- it isn't -- just that conventional backlit LCDs like the ipad uses really aren't the best for the sort of reading that other ebooks are aimed at, and e-ink is arguably a bit better.

[I also spend my whole day staring at an LCD display, and far prefer reading a paper book if I've got one handy.  I'm a bit meh about current ebooks -- e-ink is a nice idea, but the hype rather exceeds the reality -- but the ipad is a step backward for that usage as far as I can tell, and even more hypetastic than e-ink...]

60

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Fragile - Namco ARPG

« on: April 01, 2010, 09:38:34 PM »

It's been a long time since I played Fragile, but I don't remember the controls being any problem at all.  And I generally suck at anything requiring skill.

61

General Gaming / Re: God of War 3

« on: March 25, 2010, 01:09:20 AM »

You know how Metroid Prime still looks pretty damn good for a 2002 game even by today's standards? God of War, not so much.

Hmm, well... you're right that MP looks really really good, and GoW1 sort of lacks the sort of same glossy-coat, but it's basically fine.  (I found it sort of surprising actually, since so many PS2 games from the same era were downright painful to look at... maybe the extra PS3 res helps, I dunno...)

62

General Gaming / Re: God of War 3

« on: March 25, 2010, 12:32:40 AM »

Been playing the God of War Collection, well I should say I've been playing God of War 2. God of War 1 holds up terribly, I didn't even get past the Hydra battle, just got frustrated from the controls and decided to move on

Hm, the hydra battle is actually very easy -- there are obvious areas to rest where you can't get hit, and it's simple to dash out and hit the boss -- but there's a little quirk you need to know to get it right (I got it from gamefaqs: basically when you grab the head using the O button, you need to really whale on the button; initially I hit it too slowly, which had no effect, but the game didn't really communicate the fact that the lack of speed was the problem).

What's wrong with the controls, though?  I'm playing in easy mode (yeah yeah), but at least then, you can basically just mash the buttons like a crazy person and you'll mow down enemies like a lawnmower... there's a chest with full healing about every 2 meters...

Anyway, I'd recommend playing past the hydra bit, I think the game gets a lot more interesting later.

63

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Announces Nintendo 3DS

« on: March 23, 2010, 12:25:56 PM »

Freaky. Still, if you're going to do 3D at home, it should be without glasses, so I'm hopeful about this. And the name is actually pretty good.

Creepiest avatar ever...

*shudder*

64

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Announces Nintendo 3DS

« on: March 23, 2010, 09:42:37 AM »

stupid stupid stupid

The benefits are "meh", and the drawbacks (slower, more data, more development time, reduced display quality *) severe.

ugh, 3d is the dumbest fad to come along in ages...  it's embarrassing to see a normally sensible company like Nintendo waste their time/money (and ours) with this crap.

(*) Well we don't actually know what display tech they're going to use, but unless they've discovered magic, it's a pretty good bet that the artifacts of the 3d system will make the display worse and more annoying

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: New Wii Zelda

« on: March 23, 2010, 01:03:09 AM »

The point of this: no used controller is safe, not from touching another dude's dong by proxy or from a teenage girl's vaginal secretions. No amount of Lysol will ever make those controllers clean ever again.

OTOH, there are probably people who would pay very good money for them...

66

General Gaming / Re: Heavy Rain

« on: March 21, 2010, 11:45:30 PM »

As for your problem with the first trial, are you sure you just weren't pressing the button right?  If I remember correctly, that's one of those "Hold the buttons" sequences, so if you kept just hitting the button it wouldn't work.

Yup, I'm pretty sure it was a bug and not my problem.  Although it was a tense moment, there was enough time to experiment and retry quite a few times, and by then I was familiar with the controls and on-screen prompting; nothing worked, there was not even the usual on-screen feedback.  Given that similar things happened others times where was incredibly obvious it was a bug (e.g., in the train station, where the movement controls completely failed to work -- until I restarted, whereupon they worked normally), it seems reasonably clear that the game is just buggy.

Note that my PS3 is not online, so Heavy Rain was running completely unpatched.

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General Gaming / Re: Microsoft's Project Natal

« on: March 21, 2010, 11:35:17 PM »

Yup... my apt is large for Japan, but I do most gaming about 3-4 feet away from my TV; if I clear out the room to make space, I might have about 8-10 available....

(note that the wii also has these issue a bit, but can be coaxed to work in small spaces)

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General Gaming / Re: God of War 3

« on: March 20, 2010, 11:01:58 PM »

hm, well I bought GoW collection, and am enjoying GoW1 now... it's simple, satisfying gameplay, and the controls seem very good.  I like the "loose but responsive" feel.  It's a damn good thing it won't let you fall off edges when you're not supposed to, though, because I'd die every 5 seconds if it did...

The visual don't seem too bad really, especially considering it's really a PS2 game!  Certainly not "annoying bad".

Also cheaper than other PS3 games, and you get two for that price!

69

General Gaming / Re: Heavy Rain

« on: March 20, 2010, 05:50:08 PM »

BTW, re: online patching -- I don't have the PS3 hooked up to the internet, so I played through it without them, so it's possible, but... it's really buggy.

In certain circumstances the games it will fade to black after a scene (like normal) -- but never actually loads the next scene; it just stops, and that's it, you need to quit and restart from the previous checkpoint.

Sometimes certain controls just stop working.   E.g., in the train station, all you have to do at first is walk across the room, but when I first tried it, the movement controls had absolutely no effect; I initially thought this was some sort of clever way of showing how scared your character is, but I eventually realized that "oh, it's just a bug".  Restarting and trying again fixed the problem.  Another time I had completed one of the "tasks", and was sitting upside down in a burning car, and the game was prompting me with (essentially)  "press X to pick up your prize" -- but the X button didn't work, no matter how often I pressed it!  So eventually I just gave up and failed that task.

The bugs aren't "fatal" in a "you must restart the entire game and play from the beginning" way, but they can be extremely frustrating and can definitely screw up your result.

70

General Gaming / Re: God of War 3

« on: March 19, 2010, 11:56:32 PM »

Would people recommend the GoW 1&2 port, or going straight to GoW 3, for someone who's never played any of them?

71

General Gaming / Re: Sony's Motion in the Blue Ocean

« on: March 19, 2010, 06:36:35 PM »

Jack Tretton is talking(?)/demonstrating(?) Move tonite on GTTV (SpikeTV 12:30am)
http://www.gametrailers.com/images/skyscaper_GTT

What color ball will he use?!

72

General Gaming / Re: Heavy Rain

« on: March 18, 2010, 09:58:36 AM »

Hm, well i finally found a copy and played it.  It seems a decent and often involving game, but man, it's really buggy, and the controls are awful...

I just finished the game on what must be the worst ending ("unpunished") after all my characters died quickly in succession in horrible ways, the victim died horribly as well, the bad cops mocked goodness, and the bad guy strolled off happily into a pleasant and murderous future...

73

General Gaming / Re: Sony's Motion in the Blue Ocean

« on: March 17, 2010, 11:35:11 PM »

You would think they would use two people that don't look like dueche bags demonstrating their games.

They wanted to accurately represent the "hardcore gamer" audience I guess.

74

General Gaming / Re: Sony's Motion in the Blue Ocean

« on: March 17, 2010, 09:49:52 PM »

I'm not sure mocking the opponent as childish is the best choice, given the Move's Nerf-controller / clown-nose appearance...

[Actually it looks even more silly in his video than the previous shots I've seen... man, that really is a giant glowing yellow ball on the end of it...]

75

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Fragile - Namco ARPG

« on: March 16, 2010, 02:18:41 AM »

It's certainly a flawed game though...

It completely falls apart towards the end, has a nutty-stupid ending, and shows clear signs of having had development chopped suddenly at some point.  The gameplay often feels very bare and un-fleshed-out.  If you don't like stereotypical Japanese characters, you may hate this.

But, especially in the earlier parts of the game, it has awesome nostalgic and thoughtful vibe that I've never encountered in another game.  It really pushes the showa-era nostalgia angle, and if you're into that (I am, very much), you may well love it to death despite the obvious flaws.

It's really a shame it didn't get more development, because it seems clear the devs lavished a lot of love on some parts of it.