[CubaLibre]

I actually think SMRPG is probably a contender for best JRPG. People remember it fondly as charming and cute and so forth but I think it's also eminently playable and briskly, minorly challenging the way a good JRPG should be. It and Chrono Trigger are probably the only JRPGs I'd pick up and replay for fun (not counting Earthbound and Mother 3, which are sort of different beasts).
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Broco]

I think Mario RPG is a bad game primarily because it's ugly-looking. Much of the reason to like the Square games of the same era is their fantastic pixel art; SMRPG has this really disjointed pseudo-3d look.

[schroeder]

My favorite part of SMRPG is that it harnessed the impatient tapping everyone does in JRPG battles and made it a mechanic.

[Mr. Mechanical]

[username]

[Kabbage]

I fondly remember the Axem Rangers as being a hard-ass battle I barely clawed my way to victory upon. That happened a lot to me. A ton of boss fights in my first playthrough of FF6 were won with half my team dead, one attack from annihilation.
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[Rud31]

I have return for another 45 minutes with Xenoblade Chronicles. At this rate I will finish the game 5 years after I die. I'm still stunned by it's majestic vistas. I still feel like checking out when a battle starts. Maybe because it's been almost a year since I first played the first hour that I don't remember anything the game told me. Also the fucking Wii and 480p faked widescreen smeary mess.

Oh well!

Then I played Wario Shake It for like 10 minutes before my remote died and I have a lot in this house but I think I'm finally running dry on AA batteries.

New Strider is pretty good.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[Renfrew]

[Marshmallow]

I played through Vampire Bloodlines - minus the community patch. I never finished it back in the day and wanted to experience the original game for better or worse.

Plus it was kind of fascinating seeing it slowly meteorite around halfway through. Things just plain stop working.

I still enjoyed it though, despite it being an unbalanced, buggy mess and some awful slogs (especially the end game). It captures everything from my 90s goth period so well. It's like being in a Crow of Spawn comic (again, for better or worse)! Very nostalgic for me. The best bits were just exploring the hub areas, going on fun little quests for the shady characters you meet, finding out more about the seedy underworld and vampire politics as you do so.

After watching the Doom 4 trailer, I installed Doom 3 because I never played it on a machine that could actually handle it! Guys, Doom 3 is pretty boring. Like, nothing stands out about it today, except maybe that it's way too fucking dark. I think I'm going to skip straight ahead to the expansion, which was supposed to be a bit more interesting.

[CONSUME_PRODUCTS]

[notbov]

I have accepted that Nintendo stuff is forever full price and just pay out and pass the lack of savings onto other console manufacturers
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[CubaLibre]

[Broco]

I've never really felt this "survival horror" aspect of Doom, even when I first played it in the mid-nineties. It's always felt mostly like a cartoonish action game to me. There's an element of caution when entering new areas that helps to vary the pacing (and that's important -- the lack of it makes Serious Sam an exhausting samey mush) but I've still never felt much in the way of fear.

Thinking of the game most similar to Doom... what comes to mind is actually Halo. It has a lot of tactical and pacing variation, arena battles with a lot of mobility, and a garish, childish visual style.

[CubaLibre]

The first time I played Doom I was 10 and I was scared witless. It does sort of morph into a fast cartoony action game as you get more accustomed to it. The fact that it's been more or less continually developed for 20 years thanks to the wad scene also makes answering the question "what is Doom?" pretty impossible. The Idea Of Doom contains multitudes at this point.

I guess the point is that whatever magic the original Doom/2 iwads contain, a lot of it is based on the art style and the way movement feels as a result of the 2.5D raycasting engine, none of which is applicable to a high-def, fully polygonal game. Any new Doom is going to have to be substantially different from the old Doom. So I liked Doom 3 as an attempt to do just that, partially-successful as it may have been.

I can see the Halo comparison. Probably I think the 3D game most like Doom is Painkiller, but no one cares about Painkiller.

Actually, you know what, the #1 most important thing about Doom is that it's an FPS with almost all projectile (as opposed to hitscan) enemies. That's one of the things that makes Serious Sam feel so much like Doom even though they're actually very different, the fact that you can Not Get Hit if you're agile enough. It's also what makes a static health pool as opposed to regenerating health work so well - you're not often compelled to take shots (ok there's a whole sub-element of managing hitscan enemies, especially chaingun guys, but this is basically true) so managing your health is up to your skill.

Honestly, notbov is saying Doom 4 takes a page from Space Marine and I thought Space Marine kicked a lot of ass. I wouldn't mind seeing Doom go that direction. Especially since one of the only nerd franchises that you could say really influenced Doom on an aesthetic level is Warhammer 40K.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Loki Laufeyson]

why have never done some kind of reverse 3d printing thing to the models on which the original doom sprites were based and used 3d versions of them in a game?

those models still exist, right?
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http://lunaticobscurity.blogspot.com/ - newest post: Snezhaja Koroleva (Arcade)
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[mauve]

I don't actually hate Doom 3(play the expansion! seriously! it is so much better! skip the main game it doesn't matter!), and this is pretty much Doom 3-2.

The 'modding tools' for new Doom look like a complete joke though.

I'm worried about the bestiary for the new one because it looks rather inflexible/samey. Even Imps were firing fast fireballs.
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[notbov]

like what I said in the news thread, the issue isn't it being Doom 3-2, the issue is that id is framing it as a Doom 1/2-styled product, which it clearly isn't. it'll be one of those things that, in a vacuum, is good, but because of what is expected of it, is disappointing.
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[Broco]

[Marshmallow]

Painkiller is boring, also you should all read the article I wrote about FPS design

I'm going to go straight to the expansion, I don't remember Doom 3 having anything interesting going on from back when I last played it

[CubaLibre]

[The King]

I picked up Arc System Works' Hokuto no Ken, and I'm enjoying it.
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[halken]

Just wrapped up DmC after a 3 month hiatus. I must say, Ninja Theory has a killer eye for art direction. Almost all the environments were luscious and unique through out the game.

Fantastic monster designs too.

Too bad everything else falters dramatically. The dialogue is atrocious. The music is generic and the plotting is quite underdeveloped and withering.

Pales in comparison to NT's previous titles.

Speaking of which, I have just fired up Heavenly Sword in preparation for Hellblade (despite it coming in 2016).

[Tokyo Rude]

Like the back of my hand.

[Deets]

[Tulpa]

In addition to Games Workshop and the aforementioned DnD cover, there's more than a fair bit of Brom influence in the games (obviously he did the cover art for Doom 2 but even before then) the monster designs and world aesthetic all looks heavily indebted to the stuff he made for the DnD setting Dark Sun, which had just come out in 1991

Doom's aesthetic is Heavy Metal (both the magazine and the music) plus Brom plus a little bit of Games Workshop
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[Wall of Beef]

Various famicom games via emulation:

Cycle Race: Roadman - Spam on the A button to pedal for varying lengths. Something interesting scenery.

Otocky - Very charming visuals and music integration. Sort of a cute-em-up with stages that loop until you collect enough music notes.

Attack Animal Gakuen - Direct re-skin of space harrier with weird animal enemies and nice music. Its fun because space harrier is fun.
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[RadRad]

I wish Otocky would release on the 3DS Virtual Console. Would love to have that little game with me at all times.
Its like a 2D cute-em REZ.
The sound/music is amazing.
I would love to see a new game by Toshio Iwai.


I've been going down the same path as you with the forgotten Famicom games, Beef.
Attack Animal Gakuen is pretty neat. And the packaging/label art is spectacular!
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http://www.iamthefourth.com/

[Tokyo Rude]

Tried megaman x4. It is pretty bad. The enemy placement is almost deliibertaely bad. The music is fart noise. As opposed to a story written by a 14 year old it is a story only a 14 year old could care about. I didnt play any of the later X games at release but i certainly read a lot of bob and george.

It does have lots of beautiful grafx on top of its terrible game. I was playing on the vita as X so i might try again as Zero on the ps3. This was the first game with zero so might have been designed for him and not X.

[notbov]

I made Code of Princess crash while delivering the death blow to a boss, so I am now considering beaten
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[seven]

[notbov]

[Rud31]

[tiburon]

Anyone played The Wolf Among Us? I wrote some tweets about it https://twitter.com/tiburonCS/status/612104444914720768

Discuss
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stream - steam - tweets

[halken]

I'm not gonna be able to finish Heavenly Sword. Up to chapter 3 where I'm trying to save redhead's father with Bjork-elf in some gallery shooting shitfest where I'm rewarded more for using the sixaxis gimmick to kill enemies off instantly (while intentionally making it harder to kill them normally).

Yea, how about I push the power-button gimmick and instakill this shitty game.

WOW.

[Tokyo Rude]

Shovel Knight is the peak of modern NES aesthetic so can we please stop. Its very good but this is it folks. Everyone else just stop.

[seven]

[another god]

Famicube look please
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interdimensional

[seven]

or that. i like the look of the famicube metroid mockup.
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â—‰ borg
steam

[Victor]

You have inspired me to finally install Shovel Knight. After some cursory investigation discovered it was designed to run at 400x240 natively. After some oddly frustrating finagling, managed to add a 400x240@60hz modeline with VMmaker to run it on my 4:3 CRT. Squished the display vertically, with the monitor's controls, to mirror its widescreen aspect ratio. Played for a couple hours before and after dinner.

You are right. The internet was right, Shovel Knight is a real good game.

[Vikram Ray]

Played Majora's Mask last night. Stuck somewhere in the swamp. I love this game's personality and how it doesn't waste a lot of the player's time. Just drops you into some action. I appreciate that.

[CubaLibre]

I've never played it, but I thought the big criticism of Majora's Mask was that it was filled with a bunch of inane fetch quests that totally waste your time.
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Let's Play, starring me.