[jotabe]

locke wrote:

Is it heretical to wish they'd reprogram some of those NES games to keep the graphics more or less intact but fix the programming issues with hit detection, lag, etc? I know that'd effect gameplay, but only for the better, imo.

Welcome to the "bad" nintendo hard games, which are only so because of that fake difficulty.

As for TMNT, no, not really. There are liars, though :O

[Mich]

That underwater level. That is the level that spawned the hatred for all water levels.

The Water Temple didn't help, either. Or Sonic. Or...

[Janus%TheDoorman]

Anyone here ever legitimately beat Megaman in one sitting on the NES?

[locke]

I've watched a friend beat Megaman 2 in one sitting in less than forty minutes without taking a single hit of damage.

The Water Temple is so complicated. grr.

The water level on TMNT though, while horrific, actually played pretty well once you got used to its quirks, it wasn't very long, thankfully, just extraordinarily hard. I eventually got to where I could beat it every time I tried, more or less, though.

[zeroguy]

locke wrote:

Is it possible to get past the first stage of A Boy and his Blob?

I remember trying to play this once for about 20 minutes without knowing wtf was going on, and stopped. There's a fun little playthrough of it here. I just love how unenthused the guy is.

Quote:

Is it heretical to wish they'd reprogram some of those NES games to keep the graphics more or less intact but fix the programming issues with hit detection, lag, etc? I know that'd effect gameplay, but only for the better, imo.

YES. GET OUT.

Also, ever seen someone legitimately beat battletoads? It's a fun thing to see!

[jotabe]

Megaman isn't really "hard", per se. It's like a supermario where you can shoot (and be shot at). You just have to have a good memory, and remember the positions of the mobs, and the time they take to fire or jump, or both, after you see them. Not the slightest bit of flexible AI or randomness (well, obviously the first wouldn't be expected).

[Mich]

I wasn't aware that PAX was quickly becoming just as big for announcements as E3 or Comicon. Who knew?

So... Duke. And a North America Wakfu release, maintained by Square Enix! That one I'm excited about.

[zeroguy]

Mich wrote:

So... Duke.

I'm really waiting for this to somehow turn out to not be released, making all parties involved some of the biggest trolls I've ever heard of.

I mean, what happens if it really does release? What do we do with all of the related jokes? I don't want to wait another decade or two for such high-quality vapourware.

[Janus%TheDoorman]

I will laugh my ass of if Duke Nukem Forever actually makes it out before Half Life 2: Episode Three.

Picked up Crackdown today. Controls are fairly unsuited to the high-agility platforming. Not quite frustratingly so, but disappointingly. The game feels a lot more like Grand Theft Assassin's Creed than anything else, and a similar control setup would have done a lot of good. The controls work well enough, but just barely.

The actual game missions are... simple and repetitive. They're all base-assault assassination missions, and too often it's too easy to make a bee-line for the target, skip all defenses and be out ASAP, and there's certainly no cleverness to it. The whole game starts to feel like a super-powered curb stomp battle, which is what it's supposed to feel like, but still.

All that said, it's actually damned good fun.

[Mich]

So anyway, just beat Other M, and it was pretty much great. I really enjoyed the storyline, "Remember Me?" dude turned out to be likable and a badass, there is a crap-ton of powerups I still need to find and will want to, and combat was really fun, if not a bit unforgiving (which is to be expected, as it is Team Ninja). I do enjoy how they attempted to justify the Bag of Spilling for once, even if it lead to some serious head-desk moments that you've probably heard about by now. Speaking of sequences you've probably heard of, the whole "breaking down at the sight of a certain recurring boss" is totally overblown in fan's minds, in my opinion: it wasn't much of a breakdown and it makes complete sense in context. Like, seriously. I was expected crying and pounding on the floor, by the point I got to it.

The fact that enemies don't leave any kind of pickup is pretty stupid, though, because then it makes fighting the ones you don't have to fight completely pointless and makes going back through areas you've already beaten even less fun, in my opinion. This also makes some parts, like the miniboss rush that comes extremely late in the game, pretty darn difficult, since there's no chance of healing, and the Concentration mechanic (which you use to heal when below a very low threshold or to recharge missiles [which is lame but goes back to the "no pick-ups" complaint]) takes far too long to do when fighting certain enemies; you'll get creamed.

It also made me very sad that you only get, like, one upgrade by finding it, even if, like I said, the unlocking helps justify things. The rest are unlocked, normally right during a boss fight that requires them. There's something about finding them, I don't know.

But it's very fun, and I imagine it's pretty much how the Prime series would have been if they had opted for third-person, cinematic gameplay, instead of first-person "figure out the story for yourself" gameplay. I think I prefer the Prime games, but that's like saying I prefer Wind Waker to Twilight Princess: it's not a large difference.

[Wind Swept]

Reach! It's finally here! And I don't have a TV! *headdesk*

I've created a Pweb group on Bungie.net so that we may ascertain who among us has remained excited enough about Halo this long into the franchise's existence to actually still be any good at it. Join me in mediocrity:
http://www.bungie.net/fanclub/pweb/Group/GroupHome.aspx

[Wil]

Finished the campaign last night. It was really quite good. The story felt a lot "fuller" than any of the other Halo's, it was packed full of excitement and action, and I actually felt something akin to sadness when Reach fell.

[Wind Swept]

We made the poor decision to sit down with four people in front of one Xbox, last night. Coop and Firefight only allows for two players per Xbox, so we ended up playing Matchmaking instead. Managed to get in the second level in coop after two of our number went to bed, but I won't be getting another crack at the campaign until later this evening. I find this deeply troubling.

[neo-dragon]

I have Reach. Haven't even looked at it yet. I've never played a Halo game in my life. I figured I'd see what all the fuss is about. I might give it a try later.

Frankly, the fact that Wil played through the campaign in one night doesn't bode well for the single player experience. And being a Halo virgin I doubt I'll fare too well online.

[Wil]

It was about an eight hour campaign on Heroic.

[locke]

about five years ago I had to read a halo novelization to write coverage on it. I think it may have been set on a planet called Reach is that what the latest halo iteration is based off of?

[Paul]

Mich wrote:

Oh, geeze, how have I not mentioned this? My current obsession is Minecraft. Those of you who have heard of it, I apologize, but yes, it is stupidly addicting. Imagine if someone took a sandbox, like the kind you dug tunnels and things out of when you were little, and made a video game of it, only giant-sized, with trees and such, and crafting. That's what this game is. The graphics are super-retro, but 3D, and it's apparently all being programmed by one guy. I have never been able to get multiplayer working, but there are a bunch of different modes, and the version you can buy has about a billion extra features.

It's so fun. The creator just added doors and ladders, and I found a tool that takes images of your maps and converts them to .png with one block = one pixel. I'm working on making a road from the current main entrance of my dungeon down to the beach.

I almost started a thread about this game. It's that great. It actually reminds me of a proto-mind game from EG. Well, its not there yet, but something about the freeform nature of the game reminds me of it.

The cake is a lie! Other than that, Ive played all of valve's games. I can hardly wait for Portal 2. The new graphics and gameplay elements look great.

Strange that no one has talked about any MMOs here. Personally, ive spent the last 2 or 3 years playing Eve Online. Anyone else here play?"

[locke]

oh my god Super Mario Galaxy 2 is freaking addicting and amazing and awesome!

[LilBee91]

locke wrote:

oh my god Super Mario Galaxy 2 is freaking addicting and amazing and awesome!

QFT

[Dr. Mobius]

locke wrote:

about five years ago I had to read a halo novelization to write coverage on it. I think it may have been set on a planet called Reach is that what the latest halo iteration is based off of?

More or less. The game consists of the battle on Reach that's at the end of that book, but it follows a different group of soldiers on the planet's surface than the ones in the book (who were in orbit on the Pillar of Autumn preparing to leave when the Covenant attacked).

[Mich]

After reading a huge blog post about the mods necessary to make it look extremely good (for its age), I have reinstalled Morrowind.

I wish you all luck in your future endeavors, and I'll see you in a few years.

[locke]

Dr. Mobius wrote:

locke wrote:

about five years ago I had to read a halo novelization to write coverage on it. I think it may have been set on a planet called Reach is that what the latest halo iteration is based off of?

More or less. The game consists of the battle on Reach that's at the end of that book, but it follows a different group of soldiers on the planet's surface than the ones in the book (who were in orbit on the Pillar of Autumn preparing to leave when the Covenant attacked).

Ahh, yes, it rang a bell. I ripped the book to shreds in coverage, almost as badly as the sci fi script that featured a super dense comet beyond pluto that was going to stop the earth spinning but we could stop it by hitting it with a single nuclear bomb (which only takes about four hours to get there and doesn't destroy it just deflects it but causes all gravitational effects to immediately cease) but unfortunately it had already slowed the earth's rotation to a fraction of what it already was (and the hero astronaut had a son with a vitamin d deficiency that required the boy to get 8 hours of sun a day and the boy would live in the twilight zone and die if they didn't start the earth spinning again!) so they started the earth rotating again by strapping iron plates to every plane in the world and having them all fly in the same direction at the same time to create a supermagnet effect to pull the earth back into normal rotation and that doesn't quite manage it so the astronaut hero also skips a nuclear bomb on a tangent course off antartica to get things back up to speed and nearly crash lands his space shuttle in the process (yes the shuttle had been equipped with the capability to fire nukes in order to send the one nuke out to beyond pluto). That script was the worst thing I read, the Halo book was almost as bad.

I am totally addicted to Super Mario galaxy 2. I just got luigi (haven't played him yet) and got my first two comets last night, goddamit the slide was freaking HARD, took me forever to beat it. The yoshi's island comet with killing all thirty spikes in 60 seconds was pretty damn hard too. I want to finish the game soon, but I'm still in world three, doh.

[Wind Swept]

Does anyone here use Gamefly? I'm trying a 15 day trial, and it seems to be working fine for the moment. However, I've heard nothing but complaints about turnaround and availability from the two people I know to have used to. It's rather exciting, as there are a lot of games I'd hate to pay sixty bucks for, but I would really like to give a play through, and it's a much better deal than what the local video stores that have video game rentals offer.

The first game on my list was Shattered Dimensions. Definitely up there with the Spider-Man 2 and Maximum Carnage on my list of Spider-Man games worth playing. Before they let out that the fourth Spider-Man would be Ultimate Spider-Man, I was really hoping for Neil Gaiman's Spider-Man 1602. Spectacularly, he is available as an alternate costume in the Noir universe. Other highlights include a script that's actually quite funny all the way through, NPH voicing the Amazing Spider-Man, and Deadpool hosting a reality-tv-killfest.

My girlfriend opted for Super Mario Galaxy 2 as our second disc. For some reason, I can't get myself into this one. I really enjoyed the first one, but there's something about this one that turns me off completely. Alas. I was looking forward to giving it a play through.

Sonic Adventure released on XBLA, so I'm playing through it yet again. I've finished Sonic and Tails' adventures, working on Knuckles. I'm not looking forward to replaying Big's stupid, stupid, stupid fishing levels, but I need all the emblems to unlock Metal Sonic...

And finally, I've been playing a ton of Reach. Three achievements left. Not excited about getting A Monument to All Your Sins. I'm almost to Captain, and it's only a matter of time before I reach Lt. Colonel and finish off the last one.

I spent some time in Forge with a couple friends the other day. That is a much more satisfying experience than it was in Halo 3. Most important discovery of the day: Landmine + propane tank with a short respawn timer = awesome explosion to use in creating an Omaha Beach Invasion map.

[daPyr0x]

This made me think of you all

[Janus%TheDoorman]

They're making MegaMan Legends 3.

They're making MegaMan Legends 3.

They're making MegaMan Legends 3

I realize that might not be as big a deal to other people, but Megaman Legends, well MegaMan 64, was one of the games that made me a gamer. I had a SNES, and enjoyed Super Mario World, but I can remember scoffing at my friends who played Zelda on the NES when we could be outside playing football, and even when Ocarina of Time came out and some friends were really psyched about it, I thought of Zelda as one of those esoteric nerd things I just didn't get. FF9 first hooked me, and I rented that until I got to disc 3, and my dog ate my memory card. I was hooked at that point, though, and my cousin had bought Ocarina of Time, though, and I got hooked on that, and my parents bought me an N64 of my own. In that same rental store, I found MegaMan 64 - the N64 port of MegaMan Legends.

Never before or since have I played a game so thoroughly. By the time I was done I could play through the game from start to finish in an hour and fifteen minutes - that playthrough is probably my fondest gaming memory.

So, while the rest of you are probably thinking "Oh, another MegaMan game? What is that, like 92?" (Actually it was 120 the last time someone counted... in 2008) I'll continue to chant:

THEY'RE MAKING MEGAMAN LEGENDS 3

[zeroguy]

sparkie_adams wrote:

Strange that no one has talked about any MMOs here.

MMOs might explain the disappearance of some ex-pwebbers. It apparently had you for a couple of years :)

[jotabe]

*cough*WoW*cough*

[zeroguy]

This Penny Arcade makes me fondly remember Myst. Anyone else play Myst as a kid? I remember playing it when I was really too young to be able to get anything done, but it was still fun enough. I recall at one point I just got some walkthrough guide and went through at least part of the game; it was actually still kinda fun that way!

I should probably find it and play it someday.

[Mich]

In the days before GameFAQs, my family would puzzle over Myst together. I have the entire soundtrack, and had many nightmares about some of the creepier parts. When I was able to beat Myst III on my own, after getting it for my birthday in 8th grade, it was a point of pride. I have read almost all of the books.

I love the Myst series.

Too bad I don't have the brain for them anymore...

[Rei]

I tried Myst once and got irritated with not being able to get anything to do anything.

[Janus%TheDoorman]

Started playing Minecraft. Started first on peaceful, and used INVEdit to stock up on Diamond blocks, figuring that what I really wanted to do was build super-structures, but that got boring very quickly. With mobs on and just your bare hands to start, the game gets very intense - I'd go so far as to call it a survival-horror sandbox. I froze dead in my tracks, quit the game and avoided looking at my laptop for hours when I realized there was a spider on the roof of my house. That sound...

Once you get rolling, though, the game really comes alive. I imagine my version of heaven wouldn't actually be far off from the minecraft world.

[Mich]

Janus%TheDoorman wrote:

Started playing Minecraft. Started first on peaceful, and used INVEdit to stock up on Diamond blocks, figuring that what I really wanted to do was build super-structures, but that got boring very quickly. With mobs on and just your bare hands to start, the game gets very intense - I'd go so far as to call it a survival-horror sandbox. I froze dead in my tracks, quit the game and avoided looking at my laptop for hours when I realized there was a spider on the roof of my house. That sound...

Once you get rolling, though, the game really comes alive. I imagine my version of heaven wouldn't actually be far off from the minecraft world.

Multiplayer would really take the cake, if it were possible to keep the survival-horror aspects, but, unfortunately, Notch doesn't have health working SMP yet. It's really too bad, but it's still loads better than just Creative multiplayer.

The SMP server that I run has a steady three or four guys contributing to it, though, and we're pumping out sweet creations that will be even better when I can finally turn monsters on and actually have to worry about them. I greatly look forward to the day.

And, because I love posting huge, high quality images, here's a map of our stuff, after a few weeks. Most of the big projects are underground, notably the Great Hall, but you can see my friend Joel's Forge-like ability to make things:

[Wind Swept]

Mich wrote:

I love the Myst series.

Did anyone else play Uru? I remember when it first came out, my family only had a Mac, and by the time my parents did buy a PC, the first online incarnation of Uru had already died. I picked up and burned through the single player versions they released and absolutely loved them. Definitely some of my best memories in the Myst universe. However, it was disappointing to have missed out on solving Myst puzzles as a group.

Then they re-released the online version on GameTap. And it was glorious. And then they cancelled it again before they got around to offering any new content.

But now, to the point of my post, it's FREE! Open source, even. If you have fond memories of Myst but never played Uru Live, DO SO NOW. I would join you, if only I had a PC. Or enough free space to throw Windows 7 partition on my Mac...

[zeroguy]

Random game-related link. I just thought it was fun.

Also, we were talking about LPs a bit recently... but I didn't realize that there's a TV show in Japan that's basically a show of LPs. I've seen a couple of them before, but I thought they were special segments on some other show or something, not just what the show actually was. I should really see some of these, since the guy was pretty funny.

[Janus%TheDoorman]

Played a bit of New Vegas. Far enough to get into the Strip, anyway. It's obviously very similar to FO3, but it has a very different feel in a lot of ways. For one your character feels far less central to what's going on. FO3 seemed like a world where everyone was just struggling to get by day-to-day until the Lone Wanderer ... wandered in and completely changed the scenario. The Courier's a lot more low profile which makes this feel a lot more like Six-Stringed Samurai than it does Mad Max or Book of Eli. I think the Six-Stringed Samurai inspiration is intentional, the Vegas connection is just too obvious.

It's a new world to FO3, that's both smaller and much more complex. There were obviously various groups of concern in FO3, but the faction and reputation system really helps bring them to life. You could vaguely play FO3 in such a way as to support the Enclave over the Brotherhood, or Tenpenny Tower over Megaton, but these felt like small and inconsequential variations in a fairly rigid narrative. New Vegas allows much greater freedom in the expression of your character.

Speaking of, character customization is different. You only get perks every other level for one, but the perks are largely unchanged from FO3, save that the skill boosting ones have largely been removed, and there are a few added in that provide bonuses for specific styles of play. Requires a much more specialized character to get the most of it. Skills are different, too, but the biggest change is in the speech check system. First of all, any of the skills can be used for a check, but most often it's Speech and Barter. And to counter save-scumming, the checks are no longer probabilistic, you either have the requisite skill or you don't. This doesn't sound like much, but having to pump both speech and barter up to 50+ early on to smooth out quests can easily leave you lacking in other skills, even with high intelligence builds. Funny enough, as important as they are, Charisma is my dump stat now, as weapons now require both a certain level of skill and strength to wield or else they sway about. Energy weapons, so far as I can tell have been gimped, mostly by the addition of a lot of cool, powerful firearms and firearm mods, the type of which were popular mods for FO3.

The changes are small individually, but together they make the Mojave a much more demanding place than the Capital Wasteland ever was. There are a variety of additional, strong enemies you face off against early on, and the desert, once you're off the beaten path is full of packs of feral ghouls and other nasties.

The bugs can't be denied, it's frozen up on me a few times, and the corrupted save issue is a big one, though that one hasn't hit me yet. Obviously both Bethesda and Oblivion are notorious for the instability of their games, and so long as I don't end up losing thirty hours of my life to a corrupted save, I'll keep one finger hovering over the quicksave button.