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Post by ECM on Jan 4, 2013 1:44:19 GMT -5
I have UB on PSP, and it's hardly what one would call a looker, so maybe it's just the game?
(I did find the story to be grating, however.)
(Order of Ecclesia?? Yea gods, man! Stop trying to be a contrarian!)
Also: wtg Ninendo or whoever for making sure nobody has ever heard of Gunman Clive!
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Post by Borsalio on Jan 4, 2013 1:55:19 GMT -5
I dunno, even the game's font is blurry. If that was intended, well, they done screwed up.
The story's pretty meh, but I like Fang (since he's a dick) and I do like how the character designs are basically human versions of classic monsters (even though they just used it as an excuse to draw a Medusa girl with huge knockers).
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Post by ECM on Jan 4, 2013 2:05:51 GMT -5
Hmm, yeah, without checking the PSP rev, I don't recall it being blurry, but that sounds exactly like what you'd expect when taking a game and scaling it up to a non-native resolution, probalby exacerbated from being a straight port from PSP.
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Post by ECM on Jan 7, 2013 16:36:20 GMT -5
Crimson Shroud (3DS): MATSUNO! That is all. (A little more: it's pretty awesome. The combat is well-designed, and the 'simulation' of a pen and paper RPG in videogame form is certainly different. It actually reminds me, in a lot of ways, of Riviera, albeit not for the pen and paper reasons.)
Gunman Clive (3DS): I really shouln't complain about a $2 game, but...I will. It's actually not terrible, it's just agonizingly shallow and blah. If, perhaps, it was set up like Megaman where you inherited weaps from vanquished bosses, I'd care, but it's basically Megaman *without* that play mechanic making it a passable, generic, platformer.
Dark Souls (PC): yes, again, this time on PC, so I'll experience the new content here. The game is still great--and still not as good as Demon's Souls. (Just make damn sure you DL the various mods that fix everything from resolution to textures to UI.)
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams (PC): this is pretty fun, but I don't like the fact that it seems to be a lot less difficult than the DS rev that came out a few years ago. Still, I'm not going to complain too much about a straightforward, well-constructed, 2D platformer in this day and age.
Black Knight Sword (PS3): Wow! This is pretty good! It's basically Ghouls N Ghosts, gameplay-wise, if you only had access to the sword weapon. Roughly. It's challenging, has a great art style (papercraft), and it's probably the first game by Grasshopper in ages that I'm really, really enjoying.
Tokyo Jungle (PS3): this was cheap on PSN, so I grabbed it, and guess what? It's a Cubivore clone[footnote:1]Cubivore being part of the EVO 'life sim' genre.[/footnote], something that, as near as I can tell, NOBODY in the ever astute crack gaming journalist squad has mentioned. This means it's actually pretty damn good, from a mechanics standpoint.
(And when I say clone, either someone who worked on Cubivore worked on this or it's a flat-out homage to Cubivore because it has LITERALLY the SAME play mechanics, down to the combat and the mating/offspring angle. It's actually a bit ridiculous that, of the reviews I skimmed, I didn't see any mention of Cubivore at all--it is, quite literally, the same game with a different skin.)
EDIT: I checked gamefaqs and *one* person has noticed the similarities. I fucking hate gamers.
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Post by arcadehero on Jan 12, 2013 22:19:39 GMT -5
As my son has been on a kick about sea creatures and those things lately we decided to get him Endless Ocean: Blue World on the Wii. Unfortunately I failed to vet the game in advance, he can usually handle it although it happens to have an awful lot of reading text in it. While he can read a lot, there is more that isn't on his reading level yet so that means I have to sit in and read it out for him so he doesn't miss anything, at least as far as the story goes.
That story deals with treasure hunting and a mystery, and the game is detailed in that they tried to make this a career simulator of sorts as you become a jack-of-all-trades, participating in aquarium curating, treasure hunting, picture taking for magazines, a tour guide, marine biologist, etc. in addition to the professional diver stuff. nice detail in a lot of the chatacter models with realistic animation.
As one might expects it gets into global warming stuff at one point which aside from that there is something that just baffles me as to how people who have really bought into the polar bears dying stuff think. That is to say, not think, with any rationality being considered by their neurons, at all. You get to a point where you have to find a polar bear sitting on ice and "study" it - from 10 ft. away. Now the game has a lot of detail in warning the player of dangerous animals, although there is no threat of death whatsoever (Great White sharks will whack you with their tail, stings and shocks from others all just contributes to bringing your air supply down, which if it hits zero the game just takes you back to the boat no matter where you are. So it has pretty much zero challenge but is more about exploring, collecting stuff and looking at sea animals) but when the polar bears appear, that is thrown out the window completely, the game even has you feeding the cute bears fish right in front of them.
When the bear was found the family went into the tirade about how cute they are so I being a now older crochety old man had to rain on their parade. I had to make a point to my kids (7 and 3) that polar bears might be cute but they are not teddy bears that you can have as a pet, they are dangerous, wild animals that wouldn't hesitate to have them as a meal. Not that there are any chances of my kids ever running into those bears (black bears is a possibility though here in Utah) but I hate this sort of thing being taught to impressionable minds (despite my little talk, my daughter still had dreams about cute polar bears last night) as though a wild animal is equivalent to a docile house pet. In all honesty this part of the game really had no bearing on the story, as though someone at Akira wanted to figure out a way to push the GW/Climate Change into the game somehow so tacked that on. From what I have seen afterwards, the game does not get into activism whatsoever so that also is where it feels out of place.
That aside and despite the complete lack of challenge to the title, it is interesting. There is a lot you can do with putting together an island and tasks that will earn you money to purchase stuff. While there is a lot to read and it has distracted me from some other things, it can be fun to do voices for the characters or make stuff up for their dialogue on occasion. But if it was playing it alone I would speed through all that fairly quickly.
Graphically its not bad for the Wii, the character models as mentioned are pretty good and animated well. There is a lot of color and some of the environments look pretty neat. There are soft shadows when on land, water effects aren't the best you'll ever see but good for the Wii. I'm guessing this will be occupying the drive for the next month or two at least, although it looks like he's not too far away from the end at this point.
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Post by ECM on Jan 12, 2013 22:22:36 GMT -5
I never got that far in the 'game', but it is relaxing if nothing else.
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Post by arcadehero on Jan 12, 2013 22:30:10 GMT -5
Speaking of underwater games that are games, Aquaventure is one we played not long before Endless Ocean began taking up the main TV:
Was a prototype game until released on the Atari Flashback 2
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Post by ECM on Jan 12, 2013 22:33:09 GMT -5
You are aware child abuse is illegal?
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Post by arcadehero on Jan 12, 2013 22:56:27 GMT -5
No worries, the favorite games with the kids on the FB2 are Adventure and River Raid. My salvation is all but assured.
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Post by feilong80 on Jan 17, 2013 15:54:49 GMT -5
Dungeon Hunters Alliance: the new gamenight hotness. It (Was) very cheap and it's a very nice little Diablo clone. Tank Battles (or whatever): another gameloft joint. Enjoyable. Simple.
New Super Mario Bros. U: It's a me, 2D Mario! Pretty much what you'd expect. Boss battles are harder (that is, not trivial and stupid) so that's a nice improvement. As usual this is well made, will sell alot but get little attention in the same way that new AC/DC albums don't get new attention. Best part of it is my daughter playing with me, and getting steadily better, helped along of course with tons of effusive praise for correctly pressing the right direction on the control pad, and holding the controller without dropping it.*
Kinda recovering from another, work based depression bomb, and I'm trying to shore up some other skills (practicing guitar regularly and the like), so not as much gaming. Have Sleeping Dogs sitting on my machine but recent events have sapped my enthusiasm for it.
*Yes, that last statement is a troll for ECM.
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Post by arcadehero on Jan 19, 2013 17:33:51 GMT -5
Welcome To Frightfearland - Arcade game by GlobalVR that was brought into my place a few weeks ago to replace Big Buck HD, which only came as he wanted to put it somewhere it would probably make a lot more money. I have an arrangement with a game operator where he has two games on location, so he buys them (saving me several thousand dollars a pop), I get a cut of the earnings every week.
I finally gave it some play after arriving. I have played it before but it was briefly at a couple of trade shows. I do have to pay to play this one since I don't own it so the credits are on the line. Originally it was going to be called Frightmareland which was a better name but they had to change it for copyright stuff.
This is the sequel to the lesser known Panic/Haunted Museum. I did not care for that game at all but this one I do like. It is a mounted light-gun game, there are two extra buttons on the gun (because its the same thing used in Aliens Extermination) which perform a precise, semi-auto fire function when held down.There are 18 levels to pick from by selecting one of five paths at the beginning. The primary enemies are animatronic clowns which will throw axes, dynamite, rockets, etc or shoot at you with machine guns. At risk are 100 hostages total, which the game tracks who you've saved, the LED numerical display on the back of the gun shows you how many you have saved currently.
What is fun about this game is that its not just run here, shoot some guys, run there, shoot some guys, it feels more dynamic than that. As hostages are always at risk (and of course often popping up out of nowhere so you might accidentally blast them) there are constant situations where you have to get them out of a bind and that allows for variations that keep it fresh. As a couple of examples, one part a couple of hostages are being chased by axe wielding clowns through one of those winding metal fence walkways like you find in front of a ride at a carnival, or there is a ferris wheel where the game switches you over to sniper mode to take out clowns who are staring at the people trapped inside, there are shooting gallery mini-games, etc. And of course there are crazy boss battles as one would hope for in an arcade game, such as an animated statue that when you blow its legs of it then moves around using rocket boosters instead. Clowns, while the main enemy, are not the only one to find as you will run into psycho bunnies, gnomes, witches, mummies, etc.
The game is captioned but I caught that while GlobalVR took some pains to not list some profanity the game occasionally throws out there, the voice actors still say it. You might not be expecting "sh*t!" to be proclaimed when playing a game by its appearance but it happens. The attract mode annoys me but that is no different than most other games and eventually it just melts in with everything else. The voice acting is cheesy as one expects from these kinds of games but the one other thing that stands out is that the guns have a knocker inside them to create a loud feedback effect which suprises you at first.
The real issue with the game are the graphics. They are horrible with the game looking nothing like something that was released in 2011 which this was. First off the game runs at a low resolution, it appears to be 480p running on a 720p screen. From there it is inconsistent in the look. Sometimes there are colorful scenes which don't look bad(the carousel scene for example and some of the environments that follow it look allright), but then there are plenty of objects in other scenes that look like they were designed by a 1st year intern. Character animation is good at least and bosses generally look cool, covered in shiny textures. There are plenty of particle effects from clowns exploding into sparks and pieces. At least the frame rate is always solid but with the game between Blazing Angels and Terminator Salvation it stands out like a bloody nose. Not to mention it replacing Big Buck HD which is by far the best looking game on the arcade market at present.
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Post by ECM on Jan 20, 2013 1:46:05 GMT -5
I still can't believe a freaking hunting sim is the best looking game on the arcade market right now.
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Post by arcadehero on Jan 21, 2013 11:18:29 GMT -5
Tis true, and not by a little bit either. I suppose if we were to count what they are doing in Japan, Gunslinger Stratos looks pretty awesome. Border Break and Shining Force don't look bad as you know. But still, Play Mechanix really did some excellent work on making BBHD look the way it does.
In more play news, with a return of the Xbox 360 to my home (thanks ECM!) both EDF 2017 and Raiden IV getting some play. In fact as I write this, my son is playing through EDF as he loves to do. Made him forget about Endless Ocean, which I did not expect to happen so soon.
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Post by ECM on Jan 21, 2013 11:48:29 GMT -5
Intergalactic etymological extermination or swimming with fish? Yeah, your kid will definitely be growing up straight.
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Post by Borsalio on Jan 23, 2013 1:38:37 GMT -5
Demos!
Fire Emblem: Awakening Demo: I wish they'd enabled some of the avatar customization for the demo, but oh well. Game is fun, even if everyone's feet are missing. I think I'm going to play this on normal with permadeath on, and I'll let things fall as they will, no resets if someone gets ganked. It'll make things more interesting.
Sly 4 Demo 2: Just went up today (for PS+), it's a different demo than the one that came with the R&C Collection. This seems to be the first mission in the game, and it even has quite a bit of cinematics included. Feels like Sly 2, which is pretty much the best-case scenario as far as I'm concerned. They also kept up the series tradition of giving Carmelita yet another new voice actress. I'm really expecting this one to live up to the best of the series.
The Cave Demo: No lie, it took me a good ten minutes to figure out the final puzzle in this demo (though it was mostly because I didn't expect to be reusing an item from an earlier puzzle). It basically plays like a general classic point-and-click (get item, use item, etc) with some light platforming thrown in. You get to select three of the seven characters in the game, so their personal skills may affect how you solve each puzzle, as well as which parts of the storyline you see. (Sadly, it does not appear to be a spiritual successor to Legacy of the Wizard, as I hoped for a few brief seconds)
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