[notbov]

this where I would tell you that Gamestops are junking retail PC copies of Dishonored for 97 cents and how I was totally pumped to pick up a copy but mine didn't have a key in it but I'm not about to go back there and be angry about my $1.02 and I got SPACE MAREEN for 3 bucks so whatever

let me tell you, I'm excited to kill me some orks
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[Tulpa]

[Raziel]

I think I'm close to the end of Arkham Asylum now, and my opinion has improved somewhat. I think the reason why it pissed me off so much at first was the lack of various gadgets at hand. Since the game is about living through the fantasy of being a Batman and you're already overpowered against enemies anyway, the first half of the game is boring since you cannot fully realize the creativity in taking down the badguys. Similarly, there's something off about the environmental obstacles that are surmountable only when you get gadgets later in the game. Most of these obstacles are just small holes or caves holding a question mark or some other collectible, and not fully realized secret areas, so they don't strike me as interesting enough to have this onion-approach.

Basically, Metroid-vania concept is ill-suited for a Batman game, in my opinion. Maybe I will like Arkham City a lot more then?

[Mr. Mechanical]

[CubaLibre]

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Picking up once again on the Batman discussion, Arkham Origins: Blackgate isn't a great game or anything but it benefits from being a lot less bloated and tedious than its console cousins. Also it's a way better example of a metrovania than those games, with actual hidden power-ups, slightly non-linear progression and the removal of the lazy EXP/upgrade system among other Metroid-y features. The dialogue is slightly less cringeworthy than the console games, too.

The developers try to incorporate 2.5D into the level design in novel ways but mostly it just ends up being needlessly confusing and annoyingly inconsistent: spots where you can move in four directions are less designated by any intuitive environmental cue than by the level designers arbitrarily deciding that this is the part of the room where Batman can change movement planes, something that has to be pointed out to you with button prompts. This also renders the map somewhat less useful than it would be in any conventional 2D or 3D game, since it shows you the top-down layout of the rooms but doesn't give you any indication as to how you're allowed to traverse them.

I'm playing the 3DS version which has some pretty impressive 3D and decent map/touch functionality on the bottom screen but has some really lo-res textures. I wonder whether I should've gotten the Vita version with its hi-res widescreen display that I imagine would make much of the game easier to navigate visually.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Marshmallow]

My problem with Dishonoured is that it was too easy to max out all your skills, turning you into a killing machine way too easy and sucking the challenge out of the game, not to mention making it too easy to specialise in every area. Also, unlike Deus Ex, there was no desire to go back and replay it to try a different style. Which may be a good thing to some people.

I would have been happier with a New Game+ and a standard mode where the XP awards are less generous, forcing you to adopt a certain playstyle for that game.

[RT-55J]

Played through some Super Metroid hacks recently because apparently I have nothing better to do.


Hyper Metroid - Recommendable. Expansive, yet still tolerable. It has issues in directing the player with regards of where to go next, though reportedly that's more of a problem if you're an idiot like me that likes to do insane walljump acrobatics the first time around. Highlights include high-jump boots that propel you nearly two whole screens up, entering Tourian early, and a stupidly flexible reworking of the speedbooster. Tourian acts as an welcome homage to some NES era favorites.

Play it, but ignore the fan-ficcy rewritten backstory.


Super Metroid Redesign: Axiel Edition - Dude realized that his hack kinda really sucked, so he naturally released an improved/overhauled version 8 years later. It's an improvement alright, but it's still hard to recommend. The ridiculous levels of polish and technical excellence are still there, but so is the stiflingly large scope (it's map is still the largest out there). As the game progressed it started feeling a bit burdensome to go from place to place (on the macro-scale). The additional of a hint system (optional), and the fact that I already knew where to go (having completed the original) only exacerbated this feeling.

Tourian was refreshing because it was completely new. The area is like a really big level from the original Duke Nukem (or something). There is some save-state requiring nonsense about halfway through, but I would hope that it gets patched out soon.

On the flip side of the new content, there are now some really asinine new puzzles, like the one guarding the Screw Attack (it literally requires a stopwatch).


Project Base - This is an ongoing aesthetic/mechanical overhaul of the original game (which apparently was the "base" for Hyper Metroid). It's like those FF1 hacks chock full of bugfixes and tweaks, except Super Metroid doesn't actually need any of that. Instead the author just added whatever he felt like, such as a bajillion different interconnecting passageways (what sequence?), dozens of room-consolidations, and a backflip move. (By golly backflipping around everywhere is stupidly fun.) It's very fast-paced, especially if you're at all familiar with the original game's layout. I liked it a lot.


Oxide - Don't play this stupid thing.

[seven]

RT, I'm guessing you already know about Eris?

I've played some other SM hacks (e.g. golden dawn) but didn't like them enough to recommend
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◉ borg
steam

[CubaLibre]

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Final verdict on Persona 4: it takes everything that was distinctive about Persona 3 and... kinda overdoes it horribly. Robs it of context too, since nearly every aspect of Persona 3 was tied into that game's specific themes and narrative, while P4 reproduces almost all of it because... people liked Persona 3.

By the end of P4 I was utterly sick of all the main characters the game spent 100+ hours trying to force me to like and the only thing I truly wanted was for them to shut the fuck up about friendship for once. I'm convinced that all the fans who have developed emotional attachments to these gibbering otaku-fied Scooby Doo rejects are experiencing some form of Stockholm Syndrome.

Between the characters and the game itself constantly explaining the glaringly obvious and/or attempting an unending, slobbering fellatio on the player's ego I felt more condescended to by much of this shit than I have in any Zelda.

Worth noting: I did play the Golden edition, which I've heard is a fair bit worse about pandering and bloat than the original.

Maybe I'm just pissed because I had to replay the last dozen hours of the game to get the stupid fucking true ending.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Ronnoc]

Now play Arena >:D

[RT-55J]

[Rud31]

Woah and just in the spring clean thread I was wondering about the kind of person that finds out they hate Persona 4 but keeps going.

And nope. I do totally like those characters and hanging out with them and it's you with stockholm syndrome that you kept hanging around them after realizing you didn't like them.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[Rud31]

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

I finished Persona 4 because I wanted to get a pimped-out Level 99 Lucifer and watch Marie repeatedly offer to have sex with me, and by God that's exactly what I got

Yeah shut up, the curvy tsundere goth-y waifu chick hits several fetish buttons for me almost as hard as the nerdy library girl from P3

[RT-55J]

[seven]

I liked Eris a lot, though I quit around the time it asked me to track down three artifacts to unlock the final area, and then did too good a job of hiding them. I've thought about starting the game over again though.

I've only played the 2012 version of Eris but I've looked at videos of the original and I'm pretty happy with the revision's changes. e.g., the metroids that are locked in cages a few rooms in in 2012were a neat way to build suspense, whereas in the original they're out of their cages and present an onerous, romhacky platforming challenge that comes a little too early on. And the long hallway with Chozo statues and tables(?) used to have a spiked floor (which made about as much sense in that environment as the walls of floating munchers did in Kaizo Mario), but the spikes' absence in the 2012 version, with nothing to replace it, was really striking: the hallway's old architecture, eerie emptiness and extraneous level geometry make it the area from Eris I remember most clearly today.

Tangent: you know that huge pit you fall into in the original SM that's supposed to prevent you from backtracking until you find the ice beam? That's where I mastered the wall jump. It's basically the most difficult place to try and learn, because it involves dodging indestructible enemies, switching between walls in midair, and doing some morph bomb stunts at the end (if you screw up this last part, you usually fall most of the way back down). It took hours. Somehow I convinced myself that it was what I was supposed to do. Maybe the reason complaints about SM railroading the player never resonated with me is because I'm so oblivious to that stuff when it's not completely in your face: I'm just really good at inadvertantly finding the path of most resistance.

Related: I'd love to see an SM romhack that replaces the heavyhanded colored doors and marked blocks with something more naturalistic, but otherwise keep the level design the same. That could be as simple as tweaking the graphics a little. You don't need to put a Super Missile symbol on a destructible block to teach the player when they need to use the super missiles. That's a bad substitute for level and visual design.

I will try Hyper Metroid once these painkillers wear off. Sorry if i'm not very lucid right now :/
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◉ borg
steam

[Hojulas]

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Gonna go on record (probably not for the first time) to declare I like Prime better than Super
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Tuxedo]

Dragon Age Inquisition is quite clearly a game made by real people (very nice real people, I have to add) instead of a gift from the Videogame Gods like every other videogame. It is all the worse for it.

[luvcraft]

[Felix]

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

The Wolf Among Us might be Telltale's best game yet in terms of writing and narrative design, despite being based on a property that I have no prior investment in. Too bad the Vita port runs like absolute shit.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[jodeaux]

[notbov]

I randomly found a Dolphin folder lurking about on my hard drive and decided that I was going to randomly download a bunch of Gamecube games and play them with no rhyme or reason to my selections other than morbid curiousity

PSO Ep. 3 and Giest didn't work and I'm too lazy to make them work

Crystal Chronicles (which I actually own twice, NA and JP copies) is still lovely and chill and beautiful and I wish developers would makes games that look like that, but prettier and that Squenix would make a modern version that doesn't involve buying 4 portable systems

Wave Race Blue Storm is WTF terrible, how do you fuck up an established Good Game like that, Jesus

Wreckless seems like a slapdash port from the Xbox original, which doesn't help since it doesn't feel like much fun

God Bless John K. and everyone else who worked on Go Go Hypergrind:



I guess it's a fun game too, it's more or less THPS3 but you also use cartoon violence to link combos (they seemingly replace special and secret gaps, kinda). it too looks really good uprezzed and all that jazz and why can't my stupid modern vidcons pop like this
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[Ronnoc]

Blue Storm isn't that awful. I mean, it's bad, but you can surf waves which is pretty neat.

I mostly ended up playing Wave Race 64 instead.

[notbov]

I dunno, I guess getting a turbo boost instead of powering up makes the idea of strategically skipping buoys more viable and interesting

it's just attached to a terrible game
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[Mikey]

I started playing Attack of the Friday Monsters while awaiting my flight at the airport yesterday. I like it. I'm not sure how much, just yet, but I like it. I may even play it to completion, which is a thing I seem to not do with games anymore.

[deautomate mutation]

Stretchmo/ Fullblox is cool: the levels are manipulable in all directions like Crashmo, but instead of moving blocks around you pull/ push them in and out a la Pushmo. It's a micro-transaction dealy, which is cool because i really don't like all the sprite puzzles in these games and i don't have to pay for em or look at em!

I've played around with the fortress of fun pack a little, which has enemies in it (whoa). I guess i might write a post up in the puzzle games thread when i've played a bit more?

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Also casting my vote behind a Crystal Chronicles remake with actually accessible multiplayer. The Wii U would seem to be crying out for this but Kawazu is too busy with his silly SaGa reboots.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Tuxedo]

[CubaLibre]

Witcher 2 (and to an extent 1) actually has a really interestingly tightloose combat system. Playing it feels like pulling a tight corner in a racing game - just barely harnessing your avatar while it wants to spin out of control. It's wilder than Souls' ultra-deliberate system and it's a massive step up from your default Batman/AssCreed "press button until press other button" group combat mechanics. I like it.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[ArOne]

[Tuxedo]

[Rud31]

[Talbain]

Well, I played some Witcher 3 - it's gorgeous and the dodging mechanics feel good. Currently playing on normal and dying to "easy" enemies. Need to figure out how the dodge works. You are super invincible while it's active but you can only take about four hits from the easier enemies. Maybe parrying helps? Didn't seem to do anything against the Drowners I fought. Enemies attack in packs, magic helps control them while you focus one down.

This is still a skill point-based system though. I assume once you figure out how to exploit skill points you can probably destroy most of the normal content.
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[Schwere Viper]

[Felonious Monk]

I'm also playing Witcher 3. Didn't have any problems with the Drowners myself but i did die stupidly fighting wolves once.

Mostly i've just been dicking around and picking flowers.

[Talbain]

So, once you get to the second level of spells in Witcher 3... the alternate "Yrden" spell kinda breaks the game.

It has completely trivialized combat and now I'm not sure what to think. I can still die easily because I'm a squishy spellcaster, but none of the fights feel as challenging or dynamic. Maybe I'll just forego using the spell - dunno yet.
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