Topics

1

Way of the Game / Game Whore 63: Sam is PISSED

« on: April 09, 2011, 07:07:57 AM »

Jonathan, kudos on an excellent Name that Game.  Because I enjoyed that so much, I won't get upset with you for (briefly) badmouthing a beloved game.

Sam?  Here is a fire.  Kindly go die in it.  Legend of Dragoon was one of the finest RPGs on the PS1, a platform chock full of excellent RPGs.  The combat system was great, the storyline was interesting, most of the characters were appealing, the world was different, and man, that gameplay really was excellent.  Truly excellent.  The only real problem it had was the omnipresent (at the time) terrible voice acting in cutscenes, which was thankfully minimal, and the slow start ... which is also pretty common among the genre, so eh.  It's a problem, but not a huge one.

2

Way of the Game / Game Whore 60: Meg ruins the show

« on: March 04, 2011, 06:46:54 AM »

In your entire run, I have been listening, from Episode 1, the day it dropped, on Gamelocus.net, until now.  I have not up to this point shut off an episode out of annoyance.  Every other podcast I listen to, there has been at least one episode that inspired me to kill it early.  I have not, until now, had an episode of Game Whore I was even tempted to shut off early.  Not even the Batman: Arkham Asylum review that could be used to put meth-fiends to sleep.

Thanks for fixing that, Meg.  In fact, if I hadn't been at work, with nothing better to do but keep listening to this or listen to old podcasts, I probably would have gone ahead and killed it.  This episode was, in a word, terrible.  Alex, Jon, and Sam all did perfectly fine, none of them were exceptional, but they all did their best to keep the episode listenable.  Once Meg got going, though ... god damn.  That was terrible.  Near the end, I was only hanging on for Name That Game.

.... Fuck.

The sad part is, this is without a doubt the best guest appearance I've heard Meg make.  So, uh, good job, Meg.  You suck less than normal.  Give yourself a prize.  Right in the face, preferably.  It shocks me that anybody could accuse her of bringing '18 charisma' to the podcast.  If that qualifies as 18 charisma, I could take a dump on a plate, and it would have at least a +12 modifier.  ... Hmm, that would make a hell of a sorcerer.  Or Bard.  Maybe a Protean Bloodline sorcerer?  Nah, probably aberrant bloodline.  I digress.

I hope Meg doesn't take up your offer to come back.  Ever.  And on the topic of Portal and my top ten list:  I don't have a top ten list.  I can't.  I have a top 3, and then a handful of things that I'll probably disagree with tomorrow.  Right now, Portal is in the list of things I'll disagree with tomorrow, but it's at least true that it's not in the part of my list that's actually somewhat stable.  It's a great game, despite the horrible, horrible awful camera, but not top 3 great.  The camera hurts it a lot.  It might have extended my list to a top 4 if not for the camera, but alas.

Anyway, in short, Meg Ruined the Episode, I miss NtG, Portal isn't on my list, but my list is incredibly short.

3

Way of the Game / Game Whore 51: Jonathan kicks Alex's ass

« on: December 24, 2010, 06:42:14 AM »

Taking notes while I listen, disjointed comments to follow.

Jonathan: The Sniper Arcade game, was that Silent Scope?  That game was thoroughly absurd and made absolutely no sense, given the premise.

It was also awesome.  An absolute blast to play in the arcade, because they had the big rifle with a second screen in the scope ... really a lot of fun.  The home version ... not so much.  Sadly.

There is worse than Superman 64.  Oh yes.  Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker for the PS1.  Having played both out of a morbid sense of curiosity, I can assure you that Superman is far and away the superior game.  Let me break this down:  The controls are at least twice as bad.  The graphics are far worse.  Like ... in Superman, it may be ugly, but at least it's bright and ugly.  As befits a Batman game, they're dark ... very, very dark.  Very dark.  Impossible to see what the hell you're doing most of the time dark.  The levels are incredibly poorly constructed, the combat system is flat out retarded, and, in a 20+ hour game ... THERE IS NO SAVE FEATURE.  At all.  On the PS1.  Yeah.

Duke Nukem 3D: Alex, I've been on the record rather extensively as hating the entire Genre, and I knew that one.  Like Jonathan says, you gotta recognize the classics, man.

Eye of the Beholder:  As it turns out, I was not yelling at my computer.  Man, I had no idea.  Good stumper!  I love stumpers.  PC games, especially old ones, double especially CRPGs, are my weakness, big time.

Metroid:  Got it in zero, because someone knows the difference between a straight platformer and an Adventure game (Go Sam!).   Also because I'm a huge nerd about first games in major series.

Killer Instinct Gold:  I was right there with ya Jonathan, except I remembered the full title.  ... Mainly because I had Killer Instinct, the SNES game (With the black catridge.  So hardcore!), and wanted to play KI: Gold soo much, and never had the opportunity.  Fulgore was my boy.  Fuck yeah, robots!

4

Way of the Game / Game Whore 50: Insulting subtitle

« on: December 22, 2010, 04:23:54 PM »

Regarding the main topic:  Count me among the crowd that buys New when I hav the option.  And not for any good reason.  I just like my stuff to be new.  It's not about supporting the industry, or enjoying unwrapping a game (I actually hate that part), I just like my stuff to be new.  I'm fine with used, but if I can get new, I will.   So all those issues relating to games giving free DLC to people who buy new?  Doesn't bother me in the slightest.  Especially the multiplayer stuff, since I don't use that anyway.

If anybody objects to receiving a used game as a gift, then they deserve a punch in the face.  Don't be so picky, dickweeds.  Honestly, there's not much else to say on that topic.  Don't be a picky dickweed.

So.  Once again I am confused by Jonathan.  The PSP makes things too complicated.  How so?  You stick the game in, you turn the system on, you play the game.  Everything else is up to the game developer, and absolutely not the hardware's fault.  Aside from having to open/close a door on the back to put in your game, this is exactly the way all (competent) handhelds work.  Simplicity itself!

Now, PSP games ... that's a bit rougher. 

Lumines is an obvious choice if you like puzzle games.  And it's a launch game, so it should be dirt cheap.  Lumines 2 is more of the same, so you might as well grab whichever is cheaper.  It's a lot of fun.

There are a number of good ports, if you haven't played the originals:  Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions in particular is well done, with a massively improved translation and a couple of nice cutscenes, plus a few new secret characters and classes.

Star Ocean: First Departure and Star Ocean: Second Evolution are an improved remake and a mildly updated port, respectively of Star Ocean and Star Ocean: The Second Story, a good JPRG and its excellent sequel.

Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, a ground-up complete remake of the original and oft-ported Lunar is a good, if overly easy game, if you haven't played the older ports.

If you're a Castlevania fan, then there's Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, a remake of one of the only titles in the series not to get released in america previously: Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, the direct prequel to Symphony of the night.  It also has the original version of Rondo and a slightly improved version of SotN on the UMD to boot.  Be aware:  The main game is the classic Castlevania style, discrete levels, deliberately clunky jumping, absolutely vicious level design, and no Metroid-style exploration.

Maverick Hunter X is an improved (in some areas) remake of Mega Man X, plus a second character and an OVA.  .... It's Mega Man X.  If you like any of them, you'll like this one too.

Also, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness and Dark Hero days.  If you haven't played Disgaea 1 or 2 ... well, here they are, plus some bonuses.  They're fun, quirky strategy games.  But if you try to do anything beyond the main storyline, it gets massively grind-tastic.   They do their best to make the grinds as fun as possible, but a grind is a grind, and if you can't stomach a grind, then the games are relatively short, light strategy games.  If you can ... they're incredibly, massively deep and looooooooooong.

P3P, Persona 3 Portable, is an improved port of the game Persona 3 for the PS2, and if you're at all interested in viciously hard JRPGs with odd (even by JRPG standards) storylines in a modern setting, you should absolutely give this a look-see.
Okay, getting out of remakes and ports, there's Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, probably the only worthwhile thing to come out of the sub-franchise that Final Fantasy VII spawned.  It's a fun action/rpg with a decent storyline.  It's mostly just fun, though.

Both God of War games: Chains of Sparta and Ghost of Olympus, are worthy entries into the series.  Stomp around with clunky controls and kill motherfuckers without much effort.  It's like any other God of War game.

I haven't played them myself, but I've heard good things about all the Metal Gear games, but the Ac!d series and Portable Ops and Peace Walker.

If you like (classic) Castlevania-esque action platforming, you might want to check out Prinny: Can I really be the hero?  It's a fun, challenging game wherein you are given 1000 lives at the start.  Good luck.  You'll need them.  If you're not a wuss and play on wuss-baby-pansy mode, one hit kills you.  From anything.  And in later levels, enemies are freakin' everywhere.  Bosses are a challenge and a blast, level layouts are creative and bastardly, and overall the game just knows how to make it hurt so good.


On the subject of Valkyria Chronicles for PSP ... that's Valkyria Chronicles 2.  I'm a bit skeptical about this one ... some of the stuff I've read has me really worried about this one.  It seems to have taken a lot of the more annoying anime tropes and decided to jam them into my lovely game that already had plenty of anime tropes packed into it to begin with.  The setting has moved from a militia to ... military academy!  Yaaay, we get soldiers that are also schoolgirls!  I hope they're wearing cute uniforms! /sarcasm  And unit classes that include ... dudes with swords.  And hammers.   ... In a military strategy game that previously included such units as Scout with machine gun, shocktrooper with BIG machine gun, guy with rocket launcher.  Sniper.  This does not bode well.  I'll check it out eventually, I'm sure ... but I'm not feeling too enthusiastic.

There are also a pretty hefty selection of old-school JRPGs for the PSP that I haven't had a chance to try, but from others with interests in that sort of thing, I've heard that there are actually a lot of good ones.

5

Way of the Game / Game Whore 47: Jonathan says "Weed is okay."

« on: November 25, 2010, 12:33:07 AM »

Regarding Uncharted:  Jonathan, you now understand how I feel about Mass Effect.

Alex, I have something for you: Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series.  It starts out rough, like all amateur work, but it improves fast.  Just a little look at where your card game came from.

Movies, Novels, etc. were once a new, never-before-seen media, true.  They were also treated as the evil that is corrupting the youth, denounced as inferior and not true art, and generally treated in a similar fashion to video games now.  It's a cycle, it'll end.  They'll be accepted.  You just have to ride it out, and do what you can to be a good example of someone not corrupted by the horrors of video games.  Someone's got to make up for me.

I didn't give two shits about Postal 2.  But now I want to run around peeing on things.  ... I should never have listened to the Trapcast.  Damn it.

What you do in between plot points as fanfic ... I've never thought of it in precisely those terms, but I've held a pretty similar opinion.  The incredibly stupid skydiving bullshit I constantly did in GTA: San Andreas wasn't part of the story, it doesn't count as part of the speech.  It was me playing out a fanfic where CJ was a really stupid extreme sports junkie.  Also, it was a blast.

Alex, your Postal story is awesome, and you are awesome.

Can/should the government limit access to the sort of things in your story?  No.  Parents should be doing what they can to rein that stuff in, and that includes choosing what games are and aren't appropriate for their child.  ...Poorly, but at least they should make an attempt.  Likewise, responsible parents should be taking interest in their childrens' writing, to encourage creativity and try to sidetrack crazy fucked up shit.  Again, they'll never really quite pull it off, but that's a whooole other topic.  Parental responsibility is what it really boils down to, IMAO.

The ESRB mace story should sound horrible. It should sound awful.  Instead, it kind of sounds awesome.  Also, the proper end result of the kid loaning his friend a copy of MW2 is the first kid getting maced, obviously.

Name that Game:
2005 TPS XBox:  Before any sentences, I say Gunvalkyrie.  And I'm wrong.  Finally!
2000 Fighting PS2: .... Bloody Roar?  Hm. Three sentences ... Virtua Fighter 2?  Nope.  Damn.  Stupid DOA.
2002 RPG PS2: Race to the finish.  One of the Suikodens?  Suikoden ... 3?  Yeah, Suikoden 3.  As soon as I got 108 stars, I was sure.  I've never gotten around to playing a Suikoden either.
2000 TPS PS2: Oooh.  That's tasty.  Red Faction is an FPS, not TPS.  Armored Core 3?  Damn it!  So close!
1992 RPG SNES: Now we're talking.  Arcana?  No... yes?  Hmm.  Eh, it's all i've got.  WOO!

Now that's more what I'm talking about!  I want more of those.  I love the sound of other people suffering.

6

Way of the Game / Game Whore 44: Blah blah MLB blah

« on: November 07, 2010, 12:31:06 PM »

Okay Alex, Jonathan, you both fail at the wingman game.  The only right and proper answer to Sam's question goes thus:

Link.

Why Link?  Well, for starters, Link could have given you a great time and avoided the whole unpleasant situation at the club.  Link is the top pimp of the video game world.  With him around, you wouldn't need to actually hit a club to see your ladies:  They would have come to you.

If you insisted on hitting the club anyway, and had your unpleasant encounter, Link could have handled it just fine.  Really, what's more intimidating than a well-built man toting a big sword staring you down in absolute silence?  And if that doesn't work:  WHAP!  Boomerang to the face, toss him out while he's stunned.

Also, for any of the more morally questionable gents along, Link could probably have gotten some of the ladies to put in a little work 'off the clock', if you know what I mean.  And, you don't have to worry about dull conversation like with professor Layton, having all your singles eaten as you would with Kirby, or him getting blasted and starting his own fights as with Duke.  Also unlike Duke, Link would arrive on time, ready to go, looking good.

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Way of the Game / Reccomend a terrible game.

« on: August 27, 2010, 10:06:46 AM »

So, Alex's comment in the latest episode thread, regarding playing ODST and telling them why they're wrong when the Three-way comes out, got me to thinking:  It's been about a year now since I played Bioshock.  That means it's time for me to put myself through my annual attempt to learn to like a Genre I hate.  For the last few years, it's been FPSes, because, frankly, I'm down to just Sports games, Racing games, and FPSes, and of the three, FPSes are the ones that I have the fewest fundamental issues with.  Namely, the goddamn camera.  My other issues can actually be addressed without changing the genre, that one, obviously, can't.

So, what's the least shitty console FPS on the market at the moment?  Why console?  Because I'm not buying something I probably won't like, and past experience has shown that I frankly don't get any more or less enjoyment out of this craptastic genre if I have a keyboard/mouse combo or a controller in my hand.  I have a little bit of time off coming up in a couple days, so now is the perfect time to sit down and immerse myself in something terrible.

Criteria: 

1. As mentioned, it has to be a console FPS. 
2. It has to be fairly recent.
3. Don't base your reccomendation on multiplayer.  Coop or competitive, doesn't matter.
4. Preferably, it should not suck.  I realize that's asking a lot in this Genre, since I've already played Portal, Steel Battalion, and Metroid: Prime, but do your best anyway.
Edit:
5.  Sell me on your terrible suggestions.  Why should I listen to your stupid idea over someone else's?
6. I'm going to insult you.  Suck it up. 

8

Way of the Game / Game Whore 35: Ridiculous News Stories

« on: August 25, 2010, 06:29:09 AM »

Still listening, just got to the bit about Bayonetta and DMC.  ... I'm confused.  I had been under the impression that it was the DMC-style gamplay that didn't interest Jonathan.  And, well ... I stand by Bayonetta being a big silly love letter to DMC.  So, games that don't take themselves seriously interest you, eh?  

Hmm... then I would like to reccomend another action game I'm very fond of that doesn't take itself the slightest bit seriously.  You may have heard of it, it got started back in the PS2 era.  It's called Devil May Cry.  All three games in the series are pretty high on the ridiculousity.  Especially the main character.  It features such ludicriousness as absurd action-movie one-liners ("Flock off, feather face!), come-ons responded to with bullets in the face, the Joker, flamenco dancing?, rocket-surfing, the wielding of motorcycles as melee weapons, and flat-out ridiculous (awesome ridiculous and hilarious ridiculous, sometimes at the same time!) action sequences.


Since I'm not braving the Voice Mail again, if I ever come up again, I'm Ozz-hray Vepp.

I'm betting RMT activity means Real Money Trade.  Oh, Alex got it.  I'm right! Never mind.

9

Way of the Game / Game Whore Episode 32

« on: July 28, 2010, 06:52:59 AM »

So, because I always forget half the things I want to say by the time I get to the forum, I'm listening at home for a change and popping things up here as I encounter them.  So this'll probably bounce about a bit randomly.

From the DMC crowd:  No hate, but disagreement, for sure.  God of War and Devil May Cry are very, very different in style, feel, and overall gameplay except at the very, very, very meta level, where it boils down to "Kill shit really hard."  God of War is easy on all but the hardest difficulty mode.  It's about your character being a massive badass who wrecks everything with very little effort, can soak up a hellacious amount of punishment, uses powerful, long-range weapons (the blades of chaos, artemis, whatever) to take out large groups of nobodies at a time, punctuated by something a bit stronger that you're probably going to end up taking down with a quick-time event.  You're fairly slow, the character feels heavy, and blocking/counterattacking (from the second game on) are usually preferable to dodging.  Sheer power is much more important to a fight than it is in Devil May Cry.  God of War uses the character to make you feel awesome.

Devil May Cry on the other hand, is not easy.  In fact, by today's standards, it's pretty hard, on anybody the easiest modes, which you generally don't get access to until you've proven you need it (dying repeatedly in the early stages).  It's about your character being a nimble ass-kicker who can't take a hit very well outside of cutscenes, takes out groups of enemies one or two at a time with fairly short-range weapons that in most cases are rather quick, paired up with generally weak long-range weapons for support, punctuated by the occasional tougher enemy that usually has a clever trick to it that makes it both harder to deal with at first, and easier to handle once you've got the trick down.  And you better, because they'll become the nobody enemies later.  You're quick, the character feels light, and for the most part there isn't any blocking, just dodging.  Movement is much more important to a fight in Devil May Cry than it is in God of War.  Devil May Cry expects you to make the character be awesome.

Bayonetta follows the second model.  It is a Devil May Cry game, really.  It's just more ludicrous.  The weapons are silly, the attacks are ridiculous, and the game actively encourages you to throw yourself into the path of enemy attacks, in order to last-second dodge them for bullet time, because if you don't, you're flat out screwed in most fights.

All told, I stand by what I said in a different thread:  I really doubt Bayonetta will be up your alley.  It just doesn't sound like it would suit you.

Rather than one long post, I'm going to just keep tacking posts on here.  More to come!

Edit:  Never mind.  Nothing else inspired any comments.  I'm out!

10

Way of the Game / Game Whore Episode 30: Microsoft sucks at PR

« on: July 08, 2010, 03:24:47 PM »

I'm kinda bummed about the loss of scrapper Mickey.  He seemed like a fun throwback to the days when Mister Mouse was a Bugs Bunny-esque dick to people.  Ah well.

Star Ocean.  Yeah... early game crafting sucks nuts.  It gets better.  Eventually you can get vending machines for your ship that sell the common crafting items, like eggs and screws and crap.  Speeds things up phenomenally.  As for spaceship parking spaces:  You do realize you're not generally advertising that you're aliens from highly advanced civilizations, right?  You do kind of want to keep your ship out of sight.  Granted, you should also be keeping your giant robot buddy out of sight too, but nobody comments on that. That i recall.

I'm curious, one you get Myuria, if you'll still feel no reason to switch out Lymle.  Guess it depends on whether you prefer balanced offense/healing or killing things before you need healing.

11

Way of the Game / Your Top Ten X

« on: June 20, 2010, 08:25:28 AM »

Because top ten favorites is kind of boring, and I think it'd be far more interesting to see what people consider worth making a top ten about, here we are.  Make a video game top ten.  Not favorite games, there's a threat for that, but some other top ten.  Top Ten Character Themes?  Top ten JRPGs?  Top Ten reasons Zelda games are awesome?  Whatever floats your boat.

Top Ten Massively Overated Games

10. Chrono Trigger

• Look.  Chrono Trigger is a good game.  Even a great one.  But the degree of fanaticism this game gets is downright ridiculous. 
• The characters aren't that well developed.
• The combat has a lot of rough edges.
• The story is kind of weak, and at a lot of points it just gets downright annoying. 

Relax, take a breath.  It's not that great.   Besides, they picked the wrong lead character.  It should totally have been Frog.

9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

• Okay, let's just get something out here:  This is a good, solid game.  It's not one of the best video games ever made.  It's not the best Zelda game ever made.  It's ... probably the best early N64 game, but really, the only competition you have there is Mario and Starfox. 
• Twilight Princess plays better, and has a better story.
• Wind Waker looks and better, has a better story, and a stronger feel (dear lord, that game's beautiful.  If only it wasn't so dull..).
• Majora's Mask Feels better, plays better, has a better story, but seriously, fuck those dungeons.  Too few, too lame. 
• Really, the only big thing OOT has over the other 3D Zeldas, it has the best dungeons.  But then you go back to the SNES, and Link to the Past Kicks it square in the balls, so... yeah.  Good?  Yes. 

OMFGSOAWESOME!!!1  ... No.  Just no.

8. Metal Gear Solid

• Oh, MGS.  Where did you go wrong?  Let me count the ways.
• The Gameplay was terrible.  Couldn't aim worth a crap, couldn't move well, hiding was spotty, bosses were more annoying than challenging, the stupid heat-sensitive keycard, blegh.
• The Story is kiiiinda stupid.  The whole Enfant Terrible thing is ridiculous in a bad way, Decoy Octopus was just .... wow.  Really?  That's the best you could do?  Psycho Mantis, Sniper Wolf:  Look, just shut up and die already.  You were really cool ... until now.  Now you just piss me off. 
• The Genome soldiers go right back to the stupid cloning story, but deserve extra special mention because of how the gameplay and story fail to reflect each other:  These guys are the shittiest clones of a badass ever.  They're half-blind, nearly deaf, patently retarded.  Ugh.
• Shut the FUCK up, Otacon.  Right goddamn now.
• You too, Liquid.

7. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

• How about it's easy as fuck?  When you can start a game with massively reduced stats, and punch your way through unarmed and unarmored except for weapons that reduce your damage, without the slightest difficulty or level grinding, something is seriously fucking wrong.  And good lord, if you do actually use your equipment...
• Alucard is annoying.  There's really nothing else to list here.  He's just annoying.  And he looks ridiculous. 
• If you don't have challenge or variety of gameplay, you need a worthwihle story to keep things interesting.  C:SotN ... doesn't.  The good part of the story ends when Richter says "Enough Talk, Have at you!"  Hell, the story pretty much ends right there entirely.

6. Final Fantasy VI. This game is one of two that is most frenquently held up as a pinnacle of the Final Fantasy series, and even of JRPGs in general.  What a load of crock.  The first half of the game is great.  Well plotted, well paced, full of interesting characters (and Gau) doing interesting things.  Sabin Suplexes a Train.  It's all good.  And then the world blows up.

• All that great pacing, and plot, from the first half of the game?  Gone.
• All the interesting characters doing interesting things?  Done.
• You know that point at the end of most JRPGs where the game says "Last boss is over there, go find sidequests or finish the game!"  That's half the goddamn game.  Everything is like a sidequest, and frequently not very good ones.
• Gau.  He exists.  Done.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is just plain irritating.  The boss fight at the end ... well, that's awesome as fuck.  But getting there sucks.

5. Fallout 3 This is gonna be a quick one. 

• I'm addictive when it comes to games.  When I start them, I play them obsessively.  I barely sleep.  I barely feel like I need sleep.  I need reminding to eat.  Not so with Fallout 3.  I fell asleep roughly once an hour playing Fallout 3.  It really started to screw up my sleeping habits.  Fallout 3 was actually bad for my health.  This is not a joke or exaggeration.

4. Bioshock: Okay.  When compiling this list, I made a conscious choice to try to consider the FPSes I've played off-limits, because the camera ruins them for me.  But I couldn't leave Bioshock off.  I picked the game up, despite my dislike of FPSes, because I heard it had a great story, immersive setting, and interesting gameplay elements.  I'll focus specifically on those.

• The story is Dull, trite, predictable, and has a shitty ending. 
• Atlas was an irritating tool.  Within half an hour, I found myself shouting at him "Would you kindly shut your goddamn mouth, you stupid Mick?" 
• [spoiler]I called Fontaine as the villain (and that he was Atlas) pretty much the first time he was brought up.[/spoiler]
• [spoiler]Andrew Ryan was a colossal disappointment, and a prime example of climactic encounters done wrong.  Pretty quickly, I was wanting to beat his face in personally just for annoying me.[/spoiler]
• The setting.  It's underwater, it's 'creepy.'  Yippee Skippy.  I've never seen someone try to do a 'creepy' setting where everything used to be nice, then went to shit, before. [/sarcasm]  Honestly, this was the most disappointing part.  A good setting would have made the story more interesting, and made me overlook the gameplay's mediocrity while I just wandered around exploring and enjoying that as an end unto itself.  But this one was not good.  Generic messed up people in a wrecked city just isn't all that interesting.
• Oh look, Audio diaries.  That'll make things more atmosphering.  Yeah, sure.  If you think this is atmospheric, you'll probably love Doom 3.  It does the same thing, only very slightly better!
• So, where are these 'interesting gameplay elements' I was led to believe were in the game?  You run, you gun.  You shoot things with magic.  Or you beat things to death with wrenches, if you're looking for a giggle.  Yawn.
• The hacking was fun though.  I love Pipe Dreams.
• So, I was led to believe there were interesting moral choices to make.  Turns out, You can KILL THE UGLY LITTLE MONSTER GIRLS AND HARVEST THEIR ADAM, YOU HORRIBLE MONSTER! or you can Save the ugly little monster girls by turning them into even uglier non-monster girls (am I the only one who found them way creepier looking after being 'saved'?).  And if you eat one, you're a monster and you get the bad ending.  If you don't eat any, you get the good ending, and better rewards overall.  ... So really, there's no moral choice.  There's "Do you want better rewards and a good ending, or worse rewards and the superior evil ending?"  Weak.

3. Xenogears: Well, this'll be short. 

• I spent about twenty hours playing the game, waiting for it to get to the good part.  I'd heard for years how great the game was, how great the story was, how great the gameplay was, this was just an awesome game until the second disk...  Yeah, bullshit.  It was boring, it was stupid, the characters were uninteresting.  If I can't find something likeable in a game after 20 hours, I'm not playing any more.  Honestly, I normally wouldn't even go that long, but I'd heard so much about how great it got that I just had to see for myself.

2. Mass Effect: 

• The combat system sucked. It plays like a terrible Third Person Shooter, instead of the terrible RPG it actually is.
• The Mako Sucked.
• If you're not Garrus or Wrex, you're not interesting at all.
• If you're Kaiden or Liara, you're irritating as fuck.
• The levelling was underwhelming.
• The story wasn't strong enough to grab me before the other issues drove me away.
• FUCK THE GODDAMN MAKO RIGHT UP THE EXHAUST PIPE.

1. Final Fantasy VII. I'll do quick hits here, or I'll be all day on just this one.

• Cloud sucks.
• Yuffie Sucks.
• Sephiroth Sucks.
• Cait Sith Exists.
• Not enough of the Turks.
• Except for the backgrounds, the graphics, for their time, were terrible.
• Dull.  As.  Fuck.
• Aeris Sucks.
• Tifa's hot, but she's irritating.
• Needs more Barret.
• The Materia system sucks.  Makes the characters completely interchangeable in combat.  Sucks.
• Translation sucks.
• Retarded five year olds make up better plots.
• Still not enough Turks.
• Needs more Reno.

Well, there you go.  I've got the ball rolling, let's see someone else bust out a nice wall o' text.  What's your top ten X?

12

Games and Hobbies / Modern Burning Wheel?

« on: July 27, 2009, 11:47:03 PM »

Simple enough:  Are there any rules to be found for burning wheel campaigns set in modern day?



PS:  Screw you, podgecast.  Two years forum-free, and I'm back on the wagon thanks to you guys.  I'm gonna have to go back to rehab now.