Video Games are awesome

[Onslaught Six]

Started playing Quake 4 last night. It's not terrible! It's better than Turok, that's for sure, because this one is at least guaranteed to have a decent shooting system, being based off Doom 3's engine.

The problem is that it's based off Doom 3's engine--and it includes all those tedious things I hated from the beginning of Doom 3 like 'talking to people' and 'having squad members' and stuff. This is Quake! One guy against legions! Fuck squad members!

Also the Shotgun is 'ridiculously' underpowered. I'm so used to the Shotgun being a badass thing that can blow enemies apart in one or two shots, and that's sorrowly being reduced here. Do hope there's a Super Shotgun down the line.

[Sparky Prime]

So after posting my play-through of Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword in the Samus Aran topic, I thought I'd post some of my post game thoughts here.

Of course the main plot is the classic: Zelda's in trouble, Link goes to save her. But being the first game in the Legend of Zelda chronology, this game's story actually explains the origins of a couple things we see through-out the series. I think it does a good job of explaining the beginning of the Legend of Zelda.

Game play changes up a few things compared to other Zelda's. Of course there is the motion control, which Twilight Princess had for its Wii version, but as this game requires the Wii-motion plus, there is a greater range and emphasis on it, particularly with the sword that becomes apparent in boss fights and certain locks. This game also uses what they call "adventure pouches" that puts a limit on some of the gear Link can carry. He starts out with 4 but can get up to 8. This is where Link carries his shield(s), bottles, metals, and extra ammo. For the most part this doesn't bother me, but I don't like that they made two of the hearts two of metals, so you have to take up two slots carrying those around in order to have full health. And I kinda miss that the ammo expansions aren't automatically stacked on the items, but I rarely ran out of ammo. The game is pretty good about having bomb flowers or pots nearby puzzles that requires them.

In this game, Link starts out with 6 hearts rather than the usual 3. I get the feeling this is in compensation for most enemies doing a full heart of damage to Link, but this also means there are less heart pieces to collect through the game. Dungeons also felt really short to me, with many of them having a quest just to find where they are. Although a few dungeons makes this tedious, like having to guard the robot to get a bucket of water to the Fire Sanctuary when it would be easier for him to just fly it to the top of the mountain. Makes this one of the easier Zelda games in my mind, but once you beat the game you unlock "Hero Mode" if you want more of a challenge with this. This game also offers an optional boss rush (although to get certain items you have to take part in it), which I really like. So often games don't allow for rematches with the bosses. Speaking of boss fights, I was a little disappointed they basically reused 2 boss fights during the game. One of them is a little more difficult, but there is little difference from the strategy.

Overall, it's a fun game. I thought some things could have been better but it's a nice addition to the Legend of Zelda.

[andersonh1]

I was looking back through the thread, and I'm surprised that I haven't posted the game I"ve been playing for a year now. I was sucked into the world of MMORPGs when Lord of the Rings online went free to play last fall. Downloaded it a year ago around Christmas 2010. I've enjoyed RPGs going back to pen and paper D&D in middle school, so this isn't anything new for me. And like those old games, the main appeal of LOTRO is the fact that it's based on my favorite book, as well as the social aspect of the game. My brother plays, several of my friends play, and surprisingly even my mom. We get together and run quests and fight monsters and generally have a great time.

The game expands greatly on the books, as you might imagine, filling the largely empty Middle Earth with monsters and quest hubs so that there's always something to fight and something to do. With that caveat, it's a lot more faithful to the books than the movies were, and just about any person or place mentioned in the books will turn up in the game at some point, no matter how obscure. And new regions continue to be added, about once a year from what I can tell.

Great game if you're either into Tolkien or into RPGing in general.

[Sparky Prime]

Nintendo has officially unveiled the next game(s) in Generation 5 of Pokemon will be Black version 2 and White version 2. Along with the announcement was 2 form changes for Kyurem, which look essentially like a combination of it and either Zekrom or Reshiram.

http://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-black ... version-2/

[Sparky Prime]

Anyone ever play Sonic 3 and Knuckles? I've been playing it on the Wii's virtual console lately. Already beat it with Tails alone and now I'm working on Sonic and Tails. The final Death Egg boss is being a pain for me. I actually had beat the boss, but just as I got the last hit on him, I landed on the last panel of the floor as it fell away and didn't have time to save myself. And then immediately upon restarting the boss fight, the game glitched allowing me to fall through the floor to my death. I have a few more lives left but that's where I decided to break. Course now I have no rings for the fight.

[Onslaught Six]

My girlfriend and I are actually huge fans of the old Sonic games. Earlier this year we started working on tackling Sonic & Knuckles and I think we finally did it. (We conquered Sonic 3 at MAGFest one year; that was a fun hour and a half or so.)

[Sparky Prime]

I had Sonic 3, but not Sonic and Knuckles when I was younger. I can't believe how much harder the game seemed to be back then. Now it doesn't seem like much trouble to get through the game and get all the Emeralds all in one run.

[Shockwave]

I never played the Sonic games back when Sega was actually producing platform systems. In fact, I never had any of the systems (I was always a hardcore Nintendo/Sony guy), it always seemed like Sega was trying to get their systems out first so that they would be the only ones with a next gen console on the market, but they always seemed to sacrifice quality for it. I did recently download a couple of the Sonic games for the xbox though and they seem pretty fun, but I suck at them.

[BWprowl]

it always seemed like Sega was trying to get their systems out first so that they would be the only ones with a next gen console on the market, but they always seemed to sacrifice quality for it.

This is arguably what happened to the Dreamcast, except I maintain that system was actually pretty awesome. Way ahead of its time, it was basically a Naoki arcade board you could have in your living room, with a ton of different games. Still probably the best choice if you want to play still-relevent fighters like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Third Strike, and Capcom vs. SNK 2 (though this is slowly being brought up as PSN gets great online ports of that stuff). And hey, it's still likely the only console that'll ever have Project Justice on it, so that pretty much makes it my favorite console by default.

[Sparky Prime]

Woohoo! Finally beat Deathegg Zone with Sonic and Tails! Took me about 10 lives but finally! It's kinda nice having Tails there to get an extra hit or two in, but he can also really easily screw you up if he hits the laser a second before you do.

Doomsday Zone was really easy. But it's great to fly around as Hyper Sonic.

Now to beat the game with Knuckles.

Edit: And beat it with Knuckles.