The Gaming Thread

[gunsage]

So yeah, I started playing a few more games yesterday...

- Lego Star Wars 2 (PC)
- Baldur's Gate 2 with Throne of Bhaal Expansion (PC)
- Metal Saga (PS2)

The only problem is BG2 is just the way I thought it would be...too wordy and very typical of PC RPGs. I'm not giving up on it, but I think I'll definitely have to run through the tutorial as I have no idea what I'm doing. Metal Saga, as I've mentioned before, is pretty fun in small bursts. It's a nice, sandbox-style RPG in a post-apocalyptic world with plenty of humor.

I really enjoyed the original Lego Star Wars and I'm happy the second is just as good as the first. If you haven't tried them, you ought to for a quick, fun, easy romp through the Star Wars universe packed with humor. That's about it for now.

[gunsage]

So yeah...I changed my avvie because I learned about the upcoming FES version of Persona 3. That is GREAT. I thought it was Japan exclusive, but they're porting it to English as well.

[gunsage]

Yeah, Brawl looks like it's going to be great. Too bad I don't have a Wii yet. In any case, I hammered away more on SSBM and also picked up Mario Kart Double Dash. Honestly, though, I'm thinking I'll be needing to pick up a Mario Party soon...wifey gets pissed that I'm unstoppable on Mario Kart and she can only beat me with handicaps on Melee. She still enjoys playing, though, but only in small bursts.

Beyond this, yes, I picked up Apollo Justice. Good stuff. I also hammered away more on Metal Saga and SMT: Nocturne. That's about it, though.

[lordlundar]

Smash Brothers Brawl
Smash Brothers Brawl
Smash Brothers Brawl
Smash Brothers Brawl

Have I got the point? I can't WAIT for this to come out!

[gunsage]

Here we go. I have Condemned for the PC, but just like Oblivion, it runs at about half a frame per second. I know I need to upgrade, but I'm not sure what I can still upgrade in this model. It's probably just time to get a new computer, but I'd really like to build one from scratch, so I might just wait on it. Jericho looks fun, but I'm sure Crysis won't work on my machine either...though it looks very cool. Also...my game came in the mail...

- Super Smash Bros Melee (GC)

I'm sure everyone's played this by now, but my wife and I had fun beating the hell out of each other and unlocking stuff on it last night. Good times. I'm planning on getting the new Pheonix Wright as soon as I get paid. Seriously, I wasn't even aware it was out. Now I have to contemplate whether or not I ought to hurry the hell up and beat the last one or what...kinda stuck. Also, since I'd been getting more creative lately, what with RPG Maker and all, I decided to start writing out various plot points and such for my game and I've already taken out a full chapter!

Even better, the way I've written it up is via missions, so I can edit here and there as I see fit, adding and removing things at will that have dependencies on others. Fun.

[PCGameGuy]

Better late than never, I just picked up Jericho. I saw it got a lot of bad reviews, but I am having a blast with it. I love Undying, the first Clive Barker game, and this one is suitably creepy as well. Hellgate: London ticked me off, as it seems like I can't finish the single player without other people. I got to this area that is like Unreal Onslaught, and I keep failing to get enough nodes by myself to beat the machine. So, I gave up and beat Crysis instead.

I have been jamming on Condemned and The Darkness on 360 as well, and those two are a blast so far even if I do have to up the gamma to see anything. I also am on a mission to get all gamerscore for Lego Star Wars 2 and Complete. We also got Scene It and played the heck out of it too.

Picked up Game Party for Wii, and that one is a lot of fun, especially the darts and skeeball. We tend to play as family on that one, so we are constantly trying to outdo each other. The Mrs. currently has the high score on the hoop shoot, through an incredible zen-like round.

[lordlundar]

I was actually in a game store semi-recently, and some salesman tried to get me to buy it.

Probably to get rid of any remainig copies they had. I know I was contemplating it for Left Behind. I think every store I've seen is still on their first shipment.

I all honesty, it's nice that they specialise you so that you get a ton of XP from doing what your class is supposed to do, but when you get no XP from doing anything else, that's just wrong.

[Broomjockey]

Good to know some things never change. I tried playing it when it first came out. Every time they patched it, it became more broken. I was actually in a game store semi-recently, and some salesman tried to get me to buy it. Told him "No thanks, I bit that bullet once already." He claimed they'd improved it. I doubted his honesty.

[lordlundar]

Welp, figured I try Star Wars Galaxies and ran their 14-day trial. Took a 20 minute run which led me into 3 space firefights that I was screwed on after a 4 hour experience with the command interface to realize that well the concept was well done, the execution was the crappiest I have ever seen. FFXI for all it's flaws (and it has a list of them) at least has a workable interface. Really sucks when playing as a trader as you get NO experience for kills, so joining the Rebels or Empire is really a wasted effort.

[gunsage]

I wasn't even aware that the latest installment was out already! I know what I'll be getting with my paycheck this week! I really haven't been playing too much lately, but I think what I'm going to do is get back to grinding. In other words, I'm going to pick out a few games where my characters REALLY need to level up, but I know it's going to take a while to level them up and just wail away on them. Examples include...

- Dragonquest 8
- Shadow Hearts
- Digital Devil Saga
- SMT: Nocturne (hard mode)
- Metal Saga

And yes, obviously I highly recommend all of these titles.

[Chanlin]

I've been away for a bit (blame school and work on this one ), and I have to admit its really late (ie 4am) with my posting.

Why am I posting so late....

I've been up all night playing Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice.

I have got to say I was apprehensive at first about a new character but Capcom pulled this game off beautifully. The story itself is every bit as engaing as the previous installements, there are plenty of interesting plot twists and the new "perceive" system is really a cool new tool, not to mention the videos and visuals used during trials were quite well done over all. To put it mildly the used the unique platform of the DS to darn near its fullest potential.

I also have to say with just having finished it that Phoenix Wright is a cunning bastard and if you ever cross him consider your days numbered

[RichS]

Die Hard Arcade plays - I just got done trying it. It's listed as imperfect, probably because they added speedups to it - still, it's one of those games where you need a lot of CPU horsepower. I'm getting between 95% - 100% frame rate on my 2.6 GHz. dual-core system (MAME can't utilize mutiple cores at the moment). Probably will need at least 3 GHz. to run 100% all the time.

I'm not a great fan of fighting games, it's just that I'm terrible at them. Give me the classics - Ms. Pac-Man, Pooyan, Frogger, any Donkey Kong except 3. etc...that's what I originally was drawn to MAME for. Then you find games you've never heard of or that you never got a chance to play...

Oh, yeah, you might want to check out MAWS - it's a good resource to see if a game works perfectly, imperfect but plays, or not at all.

[gunsage]

Since we're all talking about Portal, I want to know if this is real or even possible. I didn't play much in the way of games last night because I was out taking tests at Tech Skills. I didn't even think about moving the second crosshair...oh well. The weird part is the ones I really want to get working are things like Die Hard Arcade, because I'd really rather not go through the hassle of finding a Saturn then the game. Screw that.

I also noticed something. Older fighting games are HARD. I mean, granted, Dead or Alive, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, etc. are tough in their own right, but I went back to play Fatal Fury and absolutely CANNOT get past Tung Fu Rue, even as a first challenger! Oddly, most other flavors of SNK fighters I can do relatively well on (Garou Mark of the Wolves, Art of Fighting 3, Waku Waku 7, etc.). I also started dabbling again in RPG Maker XP (not sure if I had mentioned that previously or not).

I'm starting to get my creative essences back. I really need to start developing at the very least to flesh out ideas and design plots. Fun stuff.

[RichS]

Beyond that, I started rifling through my MAME titles. There were a lot of them that I had no idea that didn't work. Then there's still others that need tweaking or just don't work right anyway in some fashion. For example, Point Blank has no sound AND there's two crosshairs. I'm assuming this is for two players, but when you're playing with just one player, having the other one floating in the middle of the screen with all the frenzied action going on gets a little annoying.

Yeah, there's some games that either aren't perfectly running, or need a lot of horsepower to run. As far as the two crosshairs, I usually find the controls for Player 2 and move their crosshair off screen.

Unfortunately, I haven't been doing much gaming, except for the small MAME or Bejeweled 2 session - too much college work. I know that I'm going on a gaming binge when this semester is over.

Hopefully, Portal 2 will be out by then.

[gunsage]

All day yesterday, I prepared myself to trudge through more of Jak 2...then I decided against it. No, instead I did something quite different. I can't even list all the games I played because I went through SEVERAL Big Fish titles and a few other puzzle games. However, here are some key highlights of those and more...

- Puzzle Quest (PC)
- Bejeweled 2 Deluxe (PC)
- Online Sudoku Games (PC)
- Pizza Chef (PC)
- Metal Saga (PS2)

Now, a lot of these (especially sudoku) you guys have probably played. In fact, I used to do Sudoku all the time. I really hadn't been bringing my sudoku books to work, so I just recently started doing online sudoku. One thing I don't like is often a lot of cheaper ones don't offer a "pencil" mode where you put in a small number that COULD be in the square as part of your deduction process. Now, these sites could certainly counter with the fact that it makes you think more and remember, etc.

Problem here is often these sites also time you and try to make you feel inept by ranking you. Nice. Anyway, enough of that...if you've never done sudoku, DO IT. It helps you think more dexterously, you become more visual-spacially minded, and you think more about how things rely on each other within puzzles, tasks, etc. Puzzle Quest is much more addictive than I had originally given it credit. I'll probably play some of that tonight...assuming I can get my wife away from it!

Another important one here is Metal Saga. I think I provided the link before, but Metal Saga is a remake of a remake. I think the original title was Metal Max for the NES. The remake of that was Metal Max Returns for the SNES. Both of these titles were not released in English, however, AGTP, an online group, has made a translation patch for the SNES version. In any case, Metal Saga is a remake of THAT, so there you go.

So what's Metal Saga? It's a sandbox-style RPG set in a post-apocalyptic future that involves tanks, making money...and a silly sense of humor. Now granted, there are a couple of loading issues, a lot of repetition, not enough hand-holding (in my opinion), vanilla graphics, etc. But I'll say this...the enemies remind me of something straight out of Earthbound, the music is decent, the humor overall keeps things fun, sandbox-style keeps things at your pace, and also the sandbox-style enables you to beat the game pretty much anytime you want (multiple endings, most humorous).

That's about it.