|
Post by feilong80 on Jun 23, 2011 21:12:51 GMT -5
update: Started "forcing" myself to play more Shadow Wars on 3DS so I can be done, but in the process it has really grown on me. Too bad they didn't introduce all the various mechanics sooner, to make more of the battles in the early part of the game fun.
Also started playing Dead Nation as my "play with jbob007*" game, and while it was NOT worth losing my information to hackers to get**, it is a pretty darn fun game. Old school isometric shoot em' up, good challenge, cool mechanic re: reversing the Left 4 Dead car alarm thing (in DN, car alarms attract Zombies to the cars, not to the players).
*jbob007, member of the forum... who never posts!
**Dead Nation is one of the freebies in Sony's "welcome back" program, in case you were living under a rock.
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jun 24, 2011 11:09:00 GMT -5
Justin: the new Wizardry (mentioned by Borsalio above) is out here now on PSN as Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls so, yes, it's coming out...already.
fei: see, I *hate* that when games hold back too much on the good stuff (or at least the stuff that really deepens a game, particularly strat games) until very late (usually too late).
I played Dead Nation and, man, you two HAVE TO pick better games for game night =/
Edit:
And oh yeah: *still* struggling through El Shaddai (in the sense that I don't really want to play it, but play it I am!)
|
|
|
Post by feilong80 on Jun 24, 2011 12:38:07 GMT -5
Dead Nation is just a hold over until EDF comes out, as you know!
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jun 24, 2011 13:04:16 GMT -5
What is this "EDF" of which you speak? I seem to recall someone prattling on endlessly about it, but that seem so long ago and so far away...*voice trails off*
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jun 25, 2011 16:56:42 GMT -5
Earth Seeker: This has been a long time in coming and, now that it's out, I'm not sure what to make of it quite yet.
Basically, if you want to compare it to something, it's Monster Hunter...and Pikmin...and the combat system from Xenoblade all wrapped up into one oddball game.
The main thrust seems to be doing various missions (a la Monster Hunter, PSO, etc.) so that you can face off against a really big monster which opens up more missions/areas and the cycle repeats.
Naturally there's lots of collecting (but nothing like MH's farm-fest approach where if the monsters don't kill you, searching for those rare materials will...literally) and a fairly basic. by MH standards, crafting system.
The area maps are laid out almost exactly like MH/PSO, w/ a larger map subdivided into numerous arenas w/ a load every time you shift areas, again, like Monster Hunter/PSO. And, like MH, you will chase weakened monsters from area to area until you take 'em down.
As far as the Pikmin aspect you have a small group of minions and you can use them to attack (they each have various elemental affinities, e.g. fire, electricity, etc.) or have them haul items around, though the latter has been pretty limited thus far (about an hour in). They're very cute and remind mostly of the cats from, again, MH.
For those that haven't played Xenoblade, the combat is active battle-style in that you approach enemies, hit 'A' to pull up a menu, then select your attacks. You get 'x' number of slots to fit attacks into in a given round (each attack costs a set number of slots), which can be mixed and matched between you and your Pikmin-like minions. When you're ready to execute, press 'Z' and the game starts up again, playing out your strategy, though you immediately regain control if you're hit (you also lose whatever attacks you had allocated if this happens). Check out the vid starting at 1:56 for an example from early in the game.
The Gaijin Protection is pretty minimal and I'm pretty sure that even if you know *zero* Japanese you can trial and error your way through it, since there hasn't been anything like 'find this needle in a haystack and bring it to the dude that only appears at 1AM on every other Thursday near the lamppost.' Yet.
Anyway, this is a nice break from El Shaddai which I think might be officially over for me. I just don't think I can play it anymore because it's just so damn boring =/
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jun 26, 2011 11:55:39 GMT -5
Knights Contract: making up some lost time this weekend!
Anyway, this is another God of War clone, for good or ill (mostly ill, if you must know). It has the usual batch of massive, chain, combos, QTE-style finishers Utilized much, much better here than in God of War since it makes combat faster and less prone to interruption).
The camera (surprise!) kinda sucks, but it's not a game-breaker.
So far, I'm actually enjoying it (surprise! again![footnote:1]I'm just as surprised as you and, err, me.[/footnote]) despite what a glance at the review score say is a pretty terrible game (49 average on metacritic w/ a 4.7 user score).
Yeah, sure, there are some problems, but one thing I do like very much is that it's shockingly colorful (maybe a bit too much) for a game of this style/genre. Instead of the usual, drab, grays and, well, grays, it's actually almost rainbow-hued in intensity.
The one huge complaint I've heard is that the QTEs on the bosses are game-breaking but, uh, no. The problem is (as usual) the skill level of the people playing the game. They complain about having only a split-second to enter a command but, really, if you've ever made it through Dragon's Lair or even the Krauser fight in RE4, you are not going to have any problems here--especially not one of reaction time.
Anyway, I'm going to keep going and see if I can actually finish one of these things for once. Wish me luck!
|
|
|
Post by feilong80 on Jun 26, 2011 17:20:41 GMT -5
Weekend gaming update:
3DS: Still grindin' through Shadow Wars, so I can get down to business on Ocarina of Time 3DS. Fun, but actually, it is kinda longer than I thought. Good news though, as it means the game is lasting longer and stretching my gaming dollar. Pound for pound this was probably the best of the launch bunch in terms of pure gameplay. It'll be a great bargain bin grab for all you late adopters.
PS3: Trophy whorin' in Yakuza 4, though Borsalio's absurd lead over me (80% to my 28%) has me pretty bummed! Managed 4 trophies over the weekend. Turned back on my facebook "trophy story" settings.... only to have something like this appear in my feed:
feilong80 has gained trophies in Yakuza 4!:
"VIP: feilong visited a Happy Ending massage parlor a whole bunch o' times"
"Dress Up feilong gave a hostess girl a school girl outfit and she wore it for him!"
Ok, I'm exaggerating the trophy descriptions a bit, but I was still red faced so I quickly deleted that post! Now I remember why I don't have my ps3 tell facebook what trophies I earn!
Incidentally, the massage parlor doesn't, of course, actually depict anything like a happy ending, but it is suggested in a goofball way (turn those thumbsticks! Faster! Faster!)
I'm kinda interested in the PSN Wizardry but I'm not quite ready to pull the trigger on a new game yet. Still gotta get through the stuff I have, and even then there is a HUGE backlog of good games that I need to acquire, like Little King's Story, the perennial "I have to get this" game that I have never gotten.
I also want to get going on Final Fantasy III/VI. My save was accidentally deleted when I sent my ps3 in for repairs, but it has been so long since I last played that this was probably a blessing in disguise.
|
|
|
Post by Borsalio on Jun 26, 2011 23:16:20 GMT -5
Ha, yeah, I saw your Facebooking. I was pleased to know you had eaten at every restaurant in Kamurocho.
I finished Shadows of the Damned this weekend, so I'll probably head back to Yakuza 4 soon. I'm just dreading the trophies I have left (hostessing, and that damn pachinko). The Extra Hard mode playthrough should be fun though.
Shadows was fun. I'm just glad I got the first "Dude goes through hell for blonde chick" game of the summer out of the way before the next one comes out (Catherine).
|
|
|
Post by feilong80 on Jun 27, 2011 0:01:26 GMT -5
What fooled me for a bit for the "Gourmet of Kamurocho" trophy was that there are two restaurants that are exactly the same name, same interior, etc. but are in different parts of the city. I'd go to one, think, "I've already eaten here," and move on. I eventually figured out what was happening, but a I spent way more time than I'd like to admit figuring it out.
|
|
|
Post by Justin on Jun 27, 2011 19:14:04 GMT -5
Jamming on Children of the Atom Mame-style and Mega Man 1 on VC.
Magneto is still an asshole after all these years.
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jul 3, 2011 21:24:35 GMT -5
Magneto may very well be an asshole, but he is no Omega Rugal.
"Omega Rugal: For when you've decided that you just don't like the fact that your NeoGeo is one piece."
|
|
|
Post by feilong80 on Jul 4, 2011 11:57:26 GMT -5
Of course, I'm now playing the mighty Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon, to nobody's surprise Not playing it a ton, though, because I want to save the experience for friends. Additionally, getting going again on Ocarina of Time 3DS. Probably need to get Robot Alchemic Overdrive going again at some point. I am currently playing through Kirby's Epic Yarn, which is just a pure joy to play. It's like cotton candy in game form. Great if you have a little kid to play it with; the game is a kinda spectacular to me in that they removed all consequence (you cannot die) yet it is still fun. Which is baffling and runs against the grain of "good design 101."
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jul 4, 2011 12:01:54 GMT -5
Small correction: It's cotton candy minus the sick feeling you get if you eat too much.
It's also probably the only game with precisely zero challenge that I've ever played compulsively--I can only imagine the same game w/ the difficulty of, say, the average platformer, *heart stops*.
|
|
|
Post by runinruder on Jul 4, 2011 12:56:56 GMT -5
It's also probably the only game with precisely zero challenge that I've ever played compulsively--I can only imagine the same game w/ the difficulty of, say, the average platformer, *heart stops*. That's an interesting topic... zero-challenge games that were so awesome/enjoyable that they had super replay value. Shinobi III and Shubibinman 3 come to mind for me, though I suppose there's a significant gap there: Shin3, despite being incredibly easy, is quite a bit "tougher" than Shubi3. As for the focus of the thread, I spent my Fourth of July morning playing through Shape Shifter, an old Turbo Duo favorite, to grab a few screens and verify the usefulness of a guide I wrote for it years ago. Since I've already played through the English version a bazillion times, I decided to change things up and go with the Japanese rendition today. Aside from the voices being in Japanese, the only noticeable difference was the hero starting the quest with some brown thing on rather than going shirtless as he does in the States version. (Dumb change... shirtless is the way to go for any virile, self-respecting barbarian lad.) Same great game, but I really hated the Japanese voice work, which cost the effort some personality. For instance, the English version has an appropriately sagacious-sounding old dude narrating, while the Japanese narrator guy just sounds kinda normal (which is actually preferable to the annoying shrieking/whining some of the other characters in the JPN game deliver).
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jul 4, 2011 13:07:25 GMT -5
That's an interesting topic... zero-challenge games that were so awesome/enjoyable that they had super replay value. Shinobi III and Shubibinman 3 come to mind for me, though I suppose there's a significant gap there: Shin3, despite being incredibly easy, is quite a bit "tougher" than Shubi3. Yeah, but the thing is, I mean zero challenge. Like, if Shinobi 3 and Shubi 3 are 0, then Kirby's Yarn is...-11.
|
|