Topics

1

Nintendo Gaming / Wii U hacks at 30C3

« on: December 05, 2013, 09:46:27 AM »

Apparently there are some talks about Wii U and gamepad hacks lined up for 30C3, the 30th Chaos Communication Congress. Since this is the CCC the hacks will probably be more interesting than just "we made warez run!".

2

General Gaming / Bunny Must Die: Chelsea And The Seven Devils (Indie Metroidvania)

« on: October 09, 2012, 03:21:35 PM »

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-BMDC7D/bunny-must-die-chelsea-and-the-7-devils


Yeah, another indie Metroidvania: The English version of Bunny Must Die is available now, it showed up in a pay-what-you-want indie bundle in mid-September but the official launch was some time after that (no idea when exactly but it's out now). It's from the guy that made the Gundemonium games and it's VERY much a Metroidvania, in fact it parodies both Metroid and Castlevania pretty directly.


You're Bunny, a bunny girl that was caught in the fallout of a Thermomewclear explosion and got cursed with cat ears. Your only chance to get rid of them and end the confusion over whether you're a cat or a rabbit is to go into the Devils' Maze and beat all the big bosses there. As a rabbit you can (obviously!) manipulate time, mostly by stopping or rewinding it.


If you feel like you've seen it before, the game was originally released around 2007 in Japanese but only got translated now. Its map is much smaller than something like Super Metroid but it packs a lot of stuff in there, many secrets that need to be found and many tricky puzzles and dexterity challenges (and a second playable character that almost doubles the length of the game by playing VERY differently). Overall I'd say it's difficult, not insanely hard but you'll die a lot. Frequent checkpoints make that more bearable though, it's not as crazy as La Mulana in that respect. You'll need to know the full range of abilities of your character to succeed, especially the different ways of jumping and dashing and such. I really like what the game requires you to do to win and how awesome you feel when you pull it off (and get even better than what's expected of you).


The final boss is a severe difficulty spike if you try to face it normally, make sure to collect and save the bunny dolls (basically 1ups) for that fight. You won't need them for the rest of the game due to the very frequent save points but the final boss has seven phases and using a doll makes you start at the beginning of the phase you died on with full health so it's a LOT more manageable (actually not much of a difficulty spike if you've got plenty of the dolls left). Don't waste the bunny dolls since they don't respawn. Absolutely DO try to win that fight, the second character is worth all that hardship and then some.

3

General Gaming / Fez. (XBLA)

« on: April 21, 2012, 03:35:26 AM »

Fez is awesome. The basic platformy-turny gameplay is already fun and then there's the insane level of secrets piled on top of that. Just be aware that many of the riddles require information gathered from around the game world, you cannot solve them when you first encounter them.


My progress so far is 31 cubes, 14 anti-cubes, four artifacts (none of which I could find a real use for) and two codes decrypted.


Also don't bother decyphering the intro, there's no important information there.


HI THERE HOW ARE YOU
I WILL BE YOUR
HEXAHEDRON TODAY

SO THIS IS JUST A
ROUTINE PROCEDURE
BUT I DO NEED
SOMEONE HERE JUST
IN CASE SOMETHING
GOES WRONG

IF SOMETHING DOES
GO WRONG YOU ARE
GOING TO HAVE TO
CLEAN UP THE MESS

HEY WAIT A MINUTE
CAN YOU EVEN
UNDERSTAND
WHAT i AM SAYING
AND WHAT IS WRONG
WITH YOUR HEAD

OH WELL YOU ARE
HERE NOW MIGHT AS
WELL DO THIS THING
PREPARE TO HAVE
YOUR MIND BLOWN

---

ALL RIGHT
WELCOME TO THE
CLUB ENJOY YOUR
FREE HAT

I KIND OF THOUGHT
MAYBE THIS WOULD
NOT WORK BECAUSE
OF YOUR WEIRD HEAD
BUT EVERYTHING LOOKS
AOK FROM OVER HERE

THANKS FOR THE HAND
YOU CAN GO HOME
NOW IT WAS VERY NICE
TO MEET YOU
(spoiler tagged because cross-referencing the translation would allow learning the code)

4

NWR Feedback / Problem with ad scripts on Android browser

« on: March 25, 2012, 08:30:29 AM »

When I browse the site with the browser on my Android phone there's some misbehaving ad banner script: It pastes a big banner at roughly the position where the screen's bottom is before scrolling down. I assume it's supposed to stay at the bottom of the screen but it doesn't move when I scroll so it obscures the article text, usually the second paragraph.

5

Nintendo Gaming / lolwut? Capcom reprints Gotcha Force.

« on: March 03, 2012, 10:17:01 AM »

http://andriasang.com/con05x/gotcha_force_reissue/


I guess the rumors that the Capcom devs love that game are true. It's great fun and very overlooked but how the hell did they get accounting to sign off on that reprint?

6

Nintendo Gaming / Tales of the Abyss

« on: January 27, 2012, 03:19:39 AM »

This is my current go-to game on the 3DS.


TotA seems like a fairly standard Tales game so far. It's no Xenoblade but it's portable and a good JRPG. I'm currently not far past the point where Luke decides to stop being a douchebag (a turn he manages surprisingly quickly after the decision). The detail mechanics differ from Symphonia (there's no S/T split for abilities and none of those ability gem thingies, instead there are FSC and C Core mechanisms) but the combat seems mostly the same except for the FOF change system (which isn't used all that commonly in practice). It's certainly much better than Phantasia which had very little flexibility and combo ability in the combat.


What stands out is the low res textures, were they downsampled in the port or was it like that on the PS2 as well? Does anyone know? Oh and some healing spells make a really painful high pitched noise.

7

General Gaming / The Binding of Isaac: Super Meat Zelda

« on: November 12, 2011, 02:34:26 PM »

This thread comes a bit late but I've clocked 36 hours now and figure I should start a thread before the Humble Bundle with the game ends.


The Binding of Isaac was designed by Edmund McMillen, you may know him from Super Meat Boy, Time Fcuk and Gish. It's strongly based on the first Legend of Zelda but takes a different approach to the formula: It's kinda like a roguelike. Well, in structure. It's random generated, you dive into a dungeon to beat the boss at the end and if you die you lose the game and have to start over. Unlike real roguelikes it's an action-based game and a run doesn't take more than an hour (often much less, depending on how long you survive).


Like Super Meat Boy it's both hard and gross: You'll take dozens of tries to beat the game even once and then it just unlocks more crazy stuff so you'll want to replay it right away. But you're also a little boy caught in his nightmare world, just before his mother will kill him. Naked and unarmed. Your only weapon are the tears you cry which can kill the various monstrosities (which are often clearly ex-human) of the dungeons. Blood and feces are everywhere. Urine is a weapon too. Upgrade items turn you more and more into a mutant or a demon. Yet, like Meat Boy, it's drawn in a cute way that makes the nightmare world not as horrible as it may sound.


The game is also hilarious, with tons of videogame and pop culture references among its over 100 items.

8

General Gaming / Prelude to the Chambered

« on: August 23, 2011, 02:23:36 PM »

Yeah, yeah, it's getting too much attemtion out of all the Ludum Dare entries but whatever:


Notch made a game in 48 hours. It strongly reminds me of the original Legend of Zelda. You can play it in your browser.

9

Nintendo Gaming / Games for mothers?

« on: August 16, 2011, 04:25:10 PM »

My mother got my old DS when I upgraded to a DSi and now she has the DSi since I've got a 3DS. So she plays DS games. The problem is that being a fairly hardcore gamer I don't have much of an overview over games that interest her.


She already played (or is currently playing) these games:
- Ace Attorney series (except Investigations because Capcom dropped the German translation from that and she doesn't speak English)
- Prof. Layton series
- Picross and Picross 3D
- Plants vs. Zombies (DSiWare)
- Last Window
- Brain Age
- Who Wants To Be A Millionaire


I'm out of ideas for games she could play. She doesn't like action games and she's very price conscious, considering 20€ expensive (that's 50% of the normal retail price) unless she can split the cost with me.
Any ideas?

10

General Gaming / E.ᴪ.Ǝ - Divine Cybermancy (PC Cyberpunk RPGFPS)

« on: August 06, 2011, 07:55:31 AM »

(AKA E.Y.E)


Some people liken it to Deus Ex. I can't compare that as I haven't played much of DX but EYE is definitely a deep RPGFPS with heavy cyberpunk elements (including hacking) and conspiracies.


So basically you're an agent of EYE (a secret society) who just got bumped on the head and forgot everything which is probably just an excuse to introduce you to the basic concepts of the world despite being an elite agent. You know, like The Witcher. You get the four basic disciplines of weapons, hacking, cyber augmentations and psionic powers. Different players have chosen different paths, I went with straight forward shooting for my first character but others have gone around simply hacking anybody (yes, you can hack people's brains but you run the risk of getting killed by black ICE in the process) or using psi powers to turn themselves into an army and enemies into a fine red mist. That stuff goes from simple healing up to instakilling even the toughest enemies with a risk of permanently crippling yourself.


There's multiple-choice dialogues that let you avoid some fights or just get into them, a sanity system that makes you go insane if you take too much damage and lack mental stability, a karma system that makes assholish behaviour lead to "accidents" (and in this game there's a lot of ways to behave like an asshole) and of course online coop. You can play with multiple people through the campaign or on separate maps, keeping your character progress and using the wildly varying specializations to form a powerful team. For example while you play the ATB-like hacking minigame you remain within the physical world and enemies could walk up to you and punch you in the face, your buddy could prevent that. Grunt enemies keep spawning like in Contra so you can't easily hole up and fight them all off.


The game is a bit confusing at the start and the tutorial isn't very good but by playing it you will quickly develop an understanding of how everything works. Pretty much everything is in the GUI menu and has tooltips so you don't need to go through all the tutorial videos (most of them are just "open the menu and click the button"). After finishing the first mission you're sent on you'll know what works how.

11

General Gaming / Terraria: Think Legend of Metroidvaniacraft

« on: July 09, 2011, 04:21:43 PM »

A thread about Terraria is long overdue here. Some people think Terraria is just a lame Piecraft clone but it's not about youtubing your pretty cakes. Terraria is a game about exploring caves, finding loot and building up a powerful arsenal of weapons. It has the Minecraft place-blocks-where-you-want mechanic but the focus is much more on combat and adventuring with many more fantasy elements (including magic potions and spells).


And today only it's 75% off on Steam.

12

Nintendo Gaming / Samurai Warriors Chronicles

« on: March 28, 2011, 01:14:53 PM »

Was I the only one crazy enough to buy this game? I'm currently at chapter 6 of part 1, that's not very far into the game. It doesn't feel repetitive yet but I feel like the Opportunity battle skill (refills one musou gauge for two spirit points) is totally overpowered. You use it, attack a bunch of enemies with your musou attack and have already regained those two spirit points so you can use it again immediately... I don't know how much of a difference the initial questions make but I'm playing a female character with Artist as her day job and her battle skill is Opportunity which is game breaking even on Hard.


Well, it doesn't make things too easy as there's still missions popping up all over the battlefield. I've never played a main series Samurai Warriors game, only various spinoffs (Mystic Heroes, DW: Gundam, the demo of DW Strikeforce, DW Advance and now this) but this one seems the least repetitive of them all. I end most missions with around 100 kills between all 4 characters as pretty much all fights are against officers or guards, unlike DW Gundam you don't need to kill endless numbers of grunts before you can capture a fort, the guard captain is out right away and you can just assassinate him. Juggling the multiple characters and objectives also keeps it very fast paced as you have to order them into the right positions while you do another mission so you can switch to them and finish the job within the time limits (or switch to the wounded ones and navigate them to a health pickup). Because of that it doesn't feel as lame to get back to where I was when I fail a mission (again the main comparison is DW Gundam which has endless grunt mashing between officer fights).

13

Nintendo Gaming / WiiWare = portfolio building

« on: March 09, 2011, 10:18:21 AM »

I remember hearing (on a podcast IIRC) that WiiWare and DSiWare are commonly used by developers to build up a portfolio. XBLA has insanely high requirements before they let you in, WiiWare doesn't so developers make WiiWare games to get the attention of the big publishers with access to XBLA and PSN. That's why you see so many games migrate from WiiWare to other platforms, the developer was never really planning on making money on WiiWare.

14

Nintendo Gaming / Dealing with a scratched touch screen?

« on: February 28, 2011, 01:20:05 PM »

My mother (who got my ooooooooold original DS to play Layton and Ace Attorney on) is reporting that her DS's touch screen is getting so badly scratched that it affects the touch accuracy. Is there any somewhat easy way of fixing it enough to make the taps accurate again?

15

General Gaming / Inside a Star-filled Sky: Recursive Gauntlet!

« on: February 22, 2011, 06:56:24 AM »

http://insideastarfilledsky.net/


It's a game about procedurally generated creatures in a procedurally generated world that is another creature which is in...


The gameplay is that of a top down shooter, using the mouse to aim, shooting enemy creatures and grabbing powerups. The trick is that powerups don't apply to you but to the thing you're inside of. By default you're inside the next higher player creature but you can also enter powerups and enemies (kinda like Disgaea's item world) to affect their properties by grabbing powerups in there. Don't like that lv1 corner shot that's blocking your path? Dive in and turn it into a lv15 health boost or something by replacing its powerups with health powerups! Can't find health powerups inside the powerup? Dive into a different powerup in there and replace its powerups with health powerups! It's powerups all the way down! And hey, if that enemy is so annoying just go in and replace its range attack and dodging AI with sticky shots!


Shot powerups combine, kinda like the stages in the Blast Works editor. Stick a burst and a spread powerup on your creature and you shoot a spreadshot that explodes into even more spreadshots! Of course if you invest all three powerup slots into shot powerups that means one hit will send you packing so maybe you'd want a health powerup instead.


If you get killed you get dropped into your current player creature so fix it up, stick some better powerups on there and go back into the fight!

16

General Gaming / LG vs Sony

« on: February 10, 2011, 10:39:58 AM »

Yeah, LG demanded that the PS3 be banned. That's standard practice in patent lawsuit, EVERYBODY enters a patent lawsuit demanding a ban, they never get one. It's just a pressure method. Trust me, it's going to be settled with a licensing agreement.

17

General Gaming / Hammerfight: Anger in a flying coffee grinder

« on: February 01, 2011, 10:34:19 AM »

Hammerfight is a game where you control a flying coffee grinder with a giant hammer attached and smack other flying things into bits.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIr45zHb9c4&feature=related


It looks all nice and friendly and then it hits you in the face with a point blank siege bomb. Then you crawl away and play a few rounds of hammerball only to find the ball replaced with a giant electrocuting murder machine. Of course by then you're used to that stuff because you fought the first boss at night with an escort mission going on.
There's a branching storyline and plenty of modes, just make sure to set the mouse DPI to about half what it suggests. It's totally worth the money.

18

Nintendo Gaming / Eco Creatures/Ecolis

« on: January 14, 2011, 01:46:04 PM »

Just dug that game back out again after getting so damn bored with Lock's Quest. Search didn't find a thread about it.


Ecolis is a Pikmin-like RTS with the big theme being saving the forest and fighting the polluters (a bit like Captain Planet) but I wouldn't call it edutainment unless the proper solution to pollution is to summon a bunch of magic squirrels to beat up the polluters.


You run around, sending your forest sprites to beat up things that you don't like and make sure your home tree doesn't die. It's mostly really easy, just spam units and you'll likely win. There's a bonus timer for every level, I suppose you can go for beating that time if you want an actual challenge. Or play it against a friend, there's single-cart MP but don't ask me how that works.


You have three basic types of sprites which can be turned into 4 different subspecies each. There's a separate raising mode where you can level them up or alter their stats with items you gather during missions. They also have a number and a temper. To make more sprites you need to plant matching trees during missions but the more of them you actually put into your team the thinner their experience points are spread and that lowers their level (the number you have is the maximum number you can summon in a mission at the same time, they're still replaceable). The temper is affected by semi-random events popping up, the sprites want to play with you and that shows some random event, you then can choose one of three options that will affect the temper differently. It's used to determine the autonomous behaviour of the sprites in battle, how much they run around when idle, how much they try to attack enemies and how much damage they will take before running away. Mix that however you like it.


The interface is a bit limited, like in Pikmin you have a character running around but you give orders with the stylus instead of throwing the sprites around. A problem is that even your gather and select all functions have a limited range around your character so it can get difficult to round up all the sprites you have fielded, especially if their temper makes them run around when idle which makes them spread very far across the map. The upside is that since you can only be in one place, giving orders in one area those stray sprites can end up fighting enemies on other parts of the map, saving you travel time. In one case I even had most of my sprites elsewhere autonomously fighting the boss while I was hanging back and dealing with his attacks to my home tree. One of your sprite types can airlift stuff but using them to airlift other sprites would take way too long to input, you'd have to give the orders one by one so you'll probably limit that to airlifting important things like your character or springboards. The individual sprite abilities rarely get used outside of the tree growing which is the equivalent of building things and also unlocks additional skills for your character if you do it enough (to a tedious degree).


What I don't like is how easily your character dies, there's no real consequence to that except being teleported back to the home tree but it's very annoying because it means running back to where the action is (or was if the sprites do all the fighting in the meantime). I suppose if I wasted hours of my life growing more trees with the ecolis dance I could grind up the health by increasing the greening percentage but I'm already way over the mission par times without growing more than 3-4 trees. You can't queue those things up and they keep your sprites busy for a while so growing many trees is tedious.


It's interesting how much auxiliary effort has gone into the game with local and online MP and even a level editor but the extremely low challenge kinda makes the game boring.

19

Nintendo Gaming / Glory Days - Tactical Defense (DSiWare)

« on: November 09, 2010, 01:43:40 PM »

http://dsiware.nintendolife.com/news/2010/11/get_strategic_on_dsiware_with_glory_days_tactical_defense


Unfortunately it seems to be a tower defense game but the graphics are awesome.

20

General Gaming / AI War Fleet Command 4.0

« on: October 28, 2010, 01:59:33 PM »

AI War just hit version 4.0,the amount of changes is crazy. For starters they ported the game to the Unity engine (which also adds Mac support). Mind you, this is a free patch! There's also 147 new units and 200+ pages of changes! They also released a new expansion, Children of Neinzul which has all profits donated to Child's Play!
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/10/27/the-a-i-war-update-to-end-all-updates/


The game is somewhere between 4X, tower defense and regular RTS. You fight against an AI that controls the entire galaxy and you have to carve out your way, bit by bit until you can strike their central computer systems and destroy the AI once and for all but since you are hopelessly outnumbered you must make sure the AI does not consider you a big threat until it is too late. 
http://arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php
Try the demo if this confuses you.

21

General Gaming / Castlevania Lords of Shadow

« on: September 29, 2010, 01:27:26 PM »

Well, reviews are hitting, it's a good game but I don't care at all. I don't like combat systems that are more complex than one attack move and I don't like platforming that's more complex than one jump button so there's zero appeal left in the game for me.

22

General Gaming / Tidalis (PC): The Bangai-O Spirits of puzzle games

« on: September 25, 2010, 04:18:29 PM »

Tidalis is a fucking awesome puzzle game. You link up colored tiles by pointing them at each other and making one fire a beam, trying to hit as many as possible and when others fall down they fire beams too and you can build gigantic chain reactions if your brain is up to it. As you get better you find more ways to connect tiles, passing through used up ones, tagging falling tiles mid-fall, etc and then there are TONS of game modes, special tiles and items. And how many puzzle games boast coop multiplayer?


You want a review? Here's your fucking review! There, now go and help save the developer!


Why am I posting this? Because the development studio is in critical health, largely due to the game underperforming as nobody even bothered to look at it.


If you're more of the RTS-y kind you should look at AI War: Fleet Command but I know you guys aren't big on RTSes.

23

General Gaming / Prejudice

« on: September 12, 2010, 03:35:11 AM »

So a sequel to Section 8 got announced, there's a trailer and an interview but information is still sparse. They said there will be a better campaign, more DCMs and a more evolved Swarm mode (humans vs bots with very unbalanced teams, not something like firefight).


Trailer

24

General Gaming / Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

« on: September 11, 2010, 11:23:15 AM »

Anybody else grabbed this recently translated  japanese indie game? It casts you as squeaky moe blob Recette who has to work off the debt her father left her by running an item store in a typical RPG world. Most of the money is made by haggling, kinda like Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland but with a base price shown and some guidance for how much you should go above/below that. Generally if your sell-to-buy-price ratio is similar to GameStop's you're doing it right. It's not all economy though, you can hire adventurers (unlike Tingle there's no price haggling here) to go dungeon crawling with. It's an action RPG with mechanics similar to 2D Zelda combat then. You have to make regular debt payments and if you fail it's game over. You don't HAVE to reload an old save, while you lose your money and story progress all items you own and all adventurer levels and equipment remain so you can rush through the early stages Dead Rising style. Work your way up to defeat the big evil: A large retail chain!


The translation is good and funny, the game's not all that serious overall.

25

Nintendo Gaming / Metroid (NES)

« on: September 04, 2010, 04:14:02 AM »

All this recent talk about Metroid games made me go back and play the one Metroid game I have (as part of Zero Mission) but haven't played much. I saw some Let's Play video excerpts that helped me get into the mentality of the game and now I find it pretty easy (previously I was stuck trying to navigate Kraid's lair without even the Ice Beam, I learned that I should go elsewhere first and get more items). Chalk up another one for not balancing enemy strength with player upgrades.


Anyone else got thoughts on the game? While I retract my statement that it's an awful game it still isn't that good either.