BardicKnowledge

Assuming that you're investing in Corruptors anyway (primarily so that you can also get Brood Lords I'd think), their skill is good because it works on buildings...which most players forget about.

Excellent -- will check this out shortly. Reserving this post to add discussion tonight. Well, you guys have identified the major problems. Fixing these is going to be more of a challenge than most, as this is partly a problem of larger society not contained to video games (especially the sexuality and race points). The most immediate strides can come from creating woman whose boobs aren't the sole reason for her existence.

The DotA community is just as antagonizing as the HoN community unfortunately. The reason for this is how much you depend on your teammates. In TF2, I can decide to suck it up for a few rounds as Spy (which although I enjoy, I know I'm not very good) while Frogg and Vahn_Paktu more than make up whatever I bring to the table when I'm playing my good classes (Soldier and Medic). In HoN, one guy sucking on your team constitutes a complete loss with no possibility of correction -- the issue of slippery slope is huge, as kills get you more items and more experience that is near-impossible to make up.

It also sounds like much of this has already been done in Heroes of Newerth. Not excited thus far unless substantial changes are made.

I love L4D2, and the OCR inhouse games have been the best part of playing them. Hit me up anytime! If you bug #ocremix to play it's usually possible to round up a crew, assuming that people are free. Crossover between TF2 and L4D is fairly common fyi, good idea to ask here.

Any chance of server admins throwing this into the mix on at a slow time to give us a better feel for it? Haven't looked at it yet Paranoid, but am looking forward to it tomorrow.

At least one counter-example: Audiosurf allows you to ride a song with only one note in 5 (or 15) minutes to get the achievements. If you want them that badly and otherwise lack the skill, more power to you.

"intended" apparently means removing one of the game's coolest bosses, unfortunately (Sonic 3 Launch Base finale). No one has pointed this out yet either. That being said, I always play them locked on because the games are just too short otherwise -- especially given that Carnival Night Zone (3) and Hidden Palace Zone (S&K) basically are wastes of time to play through anyway (though walking through the area where you're teleported to for special stages in S&K was cool). As far as how far in advance they thought of Tails/Knuckles as separate characters (note: Tails in 2 doesn't count, he's a palette swap that can't go Super), there are locations with bonus powerups that only Knuckles can get to even in Sonic 2. I dunno if they were patched in by the lock-technology (which is effectively an IPS patcher iirc).

Both Tails and Knuckles had access to areas that Sonic did not, thereby invalidating your idea of "not playing the game" Bleck. As for the shields, I agree that the elemental Shields didn't add as much as it immediately appears -- the added moves are not nearly as useful as the immunity properties. Lightning jump is occasionally useful in getting to different sections of a level, however. Making two-player mode more legitimate (Tails now enables alternate gameplay) can only be an improvement from Sonic 2 -- I don't even see this one as an arguable point. What surprises me most of all is that no one here has mentioned Sonic CD, which imo is the best of the series. Awesome music, time travel mechanic was super cool, and the levels are a good mix of platforming and speed sections. Did anyone else even play it?

lol. More on topic, reviews of Sonic 4 have all been good thus far -- maybe a sign of things to come with Colors?

Hahahaha, that is amazing. Agreed though, Anthony is really the only worthwhile character to emerge from this. More of him in Metroid 5 when Samus goes against the Federation outright please.

FF1 through FF4 all had item limits (they are only severe in FF1 though). No aiming kinda turns me off to the game, though I haven't played it yet.

Happy birthday, Tensei! What are you doing to celebrate?

As for the Kinect and Move, I definitely agree that they need to have great software to sell it. Similarly, I also agree that if you want good motion-controlled games, the Wii is the console to own, at least for the foreseeable future. Hopefully the new peripherals will encourage more quality development from all sides...it looks like we'll find out this holiday season.

I would guess that both Mario and Sonic Olympics titles stay as they both did fairly well at retail. Similarly, Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing is a really good kart racer (for the first time, I don't prefer the current Mario Kart equivalent). The two DS games don't have competing products on the shelves, so keep those also. I see Sonic 2006, Sonic Unleashed, and both wii-exclusive Sonic games being pulled in my mind -- anything older (Heroes) is already off shelves as mentioned for being out of the generation.

Sonic 4 is out for iOS! Haven't gotten it yet myself (I'll probably wait for the 360 version) but it apparently has two exclusive stages for iOS. TouchArcade and TouchGen's reviews are excellent also. ...could Sega have actually made a good Sonic game?

Beat you to it, see the frontpage for continued iOS talk. Back to 3DS stuff for this thread! On topic, if they don't remake Mario Clash for the 3DS I will be extremely disappointed.

To prevent those of us with iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) from having to have off-topic conversations about games in other threads, I'm making this one. Currently, I'm enjoying Tilt to Live, HornetSmash (the free minigame from Spyder), Bouncedown, Hoggy, and a random Donut Games game (currently Action Buggy) as casual games. For racing fans: Low Grav 2 plus is a lot of fun. For shooters: I'm currently using Cube and Exo-Planet, but have heard good things about NOVA and Archetype. For roleplaying games: Get Chaos Rings. I can't stress how good it is, and it's well worth whatever they're charging for it now. Zenonia is a good game that wants to be Zelda LTTP (but isn't quite there) -- I haven't played the sequel yet but would buy that before the original as I'd imagine they've made improvements. The best puzzle game is still probably Peggle, but our own Prophet's iRis AG is a very exciting take on the "match3" idea that works wonderfully for the touchscreen. Finally in this category, Auditorium is extremely slick -- a free demo of the concept is available online. I'm really looking forward to FF Tactics: War of the Lions, and fully expect Escher and maybe Eluca to show up as bonus characters. Lastly, for a glimpse of what the future might hold for iOS, go get Epic Citadel now -- it's free and will blow your mind. Games in italics are free to download and enjoy above btw, so have at it! OpenFeint is a nice program to have around to find quality free games now and then FYI. What are other people currently playing?

Once more info becomes available I'll keep it more on topic, sorry.

Again, the success of Chaos Rings and Epic's stuff is going to change that this coming year. Just wait and see! As for other companies: Capcom has been putting their XBLA stuff on iPhone pretty regularly lately. I'm sure that we'll continue to see more developers doing stuff for it, not less.

I enjoyed the new campaign. You didn't like it? Shorter, 3-level campaigns are what the game needs at this point imo, as playing through a full 5-level one is a fair time commitment.

There's nothing stopping a game with Pokemon's depth from appearing on the iPhone platform -- hell, if Final Fantasy Tactics can show up on there, then any jRPG is up for grabs (obviously Pokemon is a Nintendo franchise so it's a no go). Things like Chaos Rings and whatever Epic decides to do with its Citadel demo are only going to inspire other devs to make the same choices. I'm not saying that it will be better for gaming than the 3DS, but I do think that it's a serious competitor -- perhaps more serious than the PSP at this point.

L4D is unbearable to play when the friends list is down, moreso than any other game on Steam I can think of. Cmon, Valve, get your crap together! (And on a similar note, give me back my toys in TF2).

^That's awesome. Frying pan = baseball bat then?

$250 seems a little steep when you compare the utility of the 3DS to the utility of the 32GB iTouch4 at $300. I'm hoping they drop it a little further for us, but I guess we'll wait and see.