Triad Orion

It's the turtling effect. A lot of people can relate stories of spending hours on the same 2fort not getting anywhere. That's such a demoralizer that many don't want to play it anymore. At least with Dustbowl at worst you'll be spending 25 minutes defending one point. And yeah, that's bad when it happens. But most of the time you're fighting the clock, and that really helps keep the pace.

*Salutes* Happy Birthday, Cap'n! Hope your year goes great, and like many others before have said, Happy Bloody Everything!

Anything involving John Woo and guns are about as manly and awesome as you can get.

Didn't know people still played Armageddon. I used to be pretty good at it back in the day. Managed to get all the gold medals, which took forever. Haven't played it in a long time and probably suck again. I wasn't aware WormNet was even still running. I figured Team17 would've shut it down long ago for W:A.

I'm going to have to go with the majority and say these Brass samples are *way* too weak for what you're going for here. "X Vs. Zero" is a very powerful and tough sounding track, and as Nutritious said, your Trumpet samples are just too weak to properly convey it. Obviously this can be fixed as he suggested. Moreover, your transition during "Set Sail" to "Saturos's Battle Theme" is a bit too aimless for the piece and breaks up the flow. The transition is an interesting idea, but it ends up feeling aimless compared to the two powerful pieces it's sandwiched between. It's like having a thin slice of meat between two kaiser rolls, and it really doesn't breathe much life into the piece. The ending doesn't finish strongly either, which is a bit of a downer considering the source materials. Find a way to creatively bring Saturos's Battle Theme to a climatic head, then bring it down in an epic way to match the energy present. The other issue I take with the song in general is I don't really feel it takes enough liberties with the material to inject a better sense of self, if you would. Essentially what we have is a brass cover medley with some good ideas. Now, what I would recommend is focus on the epic sounds of both battle tracks, attempt to flesh them out by making the song more pulsing and blood-pumping. A good place to try this might be in the more deliberate, slower parts of Saturos's Battle Theme where you keep the tempo going with some variation on the notes to have the sound remain even with the earlier portions. I really think you're on to something here. I love all three of the original tracks a great deal, and it's cool to see someone working with them. Some elbow grease and polish could really make the idea come to life. Better sampling is the first step, then you should focus on keeping a more "epic" feel throughout and you could have a battle theme to really be proud of.

I would say they are comparable, but the 8-bit version isn't necessarily *better.* Mega Man 7 was not a mediocre game by any means. It was a competent platformer that was fun and challenging. A lot of the flak the game tends to get comes from the rather change-averse Mega Man fandom rather than the game's own negative demerits. It's not Mega Man X, it's true, but the fact remains that Mega Man 7 was still well-designed. That being said, I think it's astounding that a fan made game could come anywhere near the quality of the original game. This remake really is something special and is a blast to play. Also, I admit I love the 8-bit Mega Man sprite and his constant vacant expression. It makes me laugh all the time. XD

A lot of it comes from the utter laughable content that comes from fanfiction. Most of the people who write it don't write well (to say the least), and many times it ends up being self-indulgent fantasy rather than actually remaining faithful to the source material. Worse yet, some of these writers will get utterly defensive about their literary dreck and respond to constructive criticism with a jet of searing hatred. There's certainly nothing wrong with the idea of fanfiction, it's just that the well written stuff is so utterly rare and difficult to find to say the least. I think the reason why people sneer at it here is for the reason I listed above: a lot of it is self-indulgent crap rather than a work dedicated to doing justice to the source. There's not really a good comparison in musical terms, but I'm going to try to go with this: Your average fanfiction is a lot like a MIDI rip. It may have taken some random amount of work, but it doesn't sound good most of the time. As well, it's not really doing much of anything worthy with the original concept, either merely duplicating it in a lower quality or just going completely off track due to bad instrumentation. Moreover, these MIDI rips are purely derivative; not unlike dealing with the ludicrously common tropes and cliches common in amateur writing. On the other hand, a truly good fanfiction, is a lot more like an OC ReMix. It's gone through a lot of work and polish to remain faithful to the source material while conveying a high level of creativity and imaginative interpretation. Dunno if that's really the best way to put it, but it makes sense enough to me. Anyway, I'm sure the artists here wouldn't be a opposed to a well thought out, well written interpretation of video game material, but the examples would have to be specific, rather than just trying to deal with it on the whole.

Guys, if you look at the dang screenshots they show a Level 1 Frank in the mall. Odds are those screenshots are from the first day of the game when zombies are really spread out to begin with. Moreover, they're probably from a beta version of the game. We'll be getting more than ten zombies at a time. I rarely editorialize like this, but if you *really* think Capcom would dumb down Dead Rising that much, you have to be pretty goddamn dense. There will probably be fewer packed together, yes. But I'm willing to bet we'll still be seeing dozens of zombies at a time. Give it a chance, and let's get some more detailed screenshots or a gameplay video before we discount it as rubbish, all right? I am a little disappointed that they're removing the photo function. It was pretty funny to be able to capture comical moments forever on the 360 version. Though really, its functional use to the story is actually quite limited. It was primarily used in a couple of quests and leveling up, but it wasn't a crucial element. So the omission's not that terrible in the long run. Mission structure is the one thing I'm worried about, though if it alleviates Otis calling you every two minutes on the damn transceiver it'll be worth it. I hope Capcom keeps the time management element there because that's part of what made the game intense. It's all a big wait and see on that too.

Nickname: [OCR] Triad Orion Login: TriadOrion The local crit rocket magnet's still in town, y'know. XD

Adding to authenticity, the Shade Man easter egg is still intact! If you hold jump while selecting Shade Man's stage, you get the theme from Ghosts and Goblins/Ghouls and Ghosts. GOOD TIMES.

I haven't seen the opening stage either. Well, the game isn't marked with a 1.0 version, so it may not be completed just yet, and the first level might be put into play later. Or perhaps it was axed to make it more like a regular 8 Bit game. After all, all 8 bosses are there from the get go rather than just Cloud, Burst, Junk, and Freeze Man. Hard to say. Either way, the game is extremely impressive and is a pretty faithful adaptation. I've noticed though that Rush Jet is slower than its original counterpart and that a few jumps are slightly harder to make than before, but otherwise the games are very close. And that's extremely impressive. It's a lot of fun. I'm very much entertained. EDIT: Beat to the punch by Arek! XD

This is true too. While I'm certainly a big fan of the old 2-D outings, truthfully, Sonic's leap into 3-D was inevitable. Fan demand would've led to it one way or the other. Whether we would've gotten a better product is debatable. And yes, Sega gets credit for trying new things. I don't fault them for trying Sonic Heroes, for example. I do fault them for not polishing it. I don't fault them for trying the epic storylines Adventures 1 and 2 used. But in the long run, it encouraged poor, unbelievable "extreme" writing. Really, the issues all stem from terrible quality control. There are three methods to creating great games from ideas: Trying new things, reinventing old ones to make them seem new, or polishing existing ideas to a mirror sheen. The problem is, all three paths require quality control, care, and attention to detail; something that Sonic Team has shown to lack since the beginning of the 3-D era, and has continued to slip on since. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of situation. This is especially true if the company is all about the bottom line rather than putting out a good product. And let's face it, in the real world, the bottom line matters most. For better or worse, Sonic has enough brand loyalty that he'll continue to move games until he's dead and buried underneath a concrete block. Only thing we can do is to hope that Sega suddenly remembers the idea of quality control and exercises good judgment in fixing what's broken. ...It may happen. Someday.

In other words, simply toning down the epic scope of the games and making it more of an adventure rather than a doomsday scenario. ...Though to be fair, the Death Egg presented a similar doomsday scenario to the space station. Well, except about the part of the giant monster. ...Seriously though. Adventure, not self-serious epic. That's what we really need.

Congratulations, DJP! Hope everything goes well for you.

Confirmed, guys. I'll be going too. Looking forward to hopefully seeing you all there!

If it were anyone but Sega developing this title, it might actually have some promise in that you could come up with some lightning fast sword-fighting in addition to blasting through expansive worlds at a ridiculous speed. The idea of lightning fast sword-fighting isn't a bad one in its own right. It definitely does have followers in the anime genre. ...But here are the rubs: They're putting Sonic's name on it and Sega's developing it. Sega's become a pretty third-rate developer on their own with the way they mishandle their own mascot's 3-D outings, and Sonic wielding a sword is pretty ludicrous in general. I mean, he has spines, right? I was under the impression if he ever needed to cut something he'd... I dunno, DO THE GODDAMN BUZZSAW SPIN HE'S BEEN DOING FOR OVER 15 YEARS. They may attempt to justify it in game, but all these goddamn gimmicks are really unnecessary, and considering the aforementioned Sega track record? Probably isn't going to end well. I doubt this will be any sort of death knell for the Sonic series, though. If Sonic 2006 didn't drive a stake into the heart of this beast, nothing will. EDIT: On a side note, it is rather amusing that Sonic's sword there does look a lot like Alondite, though the proposal of Sonic getting anywhere near Fire Emblem is utterly laughable.

ONLY IF I'M ON YOUR TEAM. And yes. Caps was in fact, necessary.

I'm still up for Goldrush and Dustbowl. Sorry I haven't been around much lately, I'll try to be better about it.

NOES! Now I can't curse you in person for all those Crit Rockets! ....CURSE YOU! XD

I friggin' LOVE Dead Rising on the 360. My roommate in college had it and I've missed playing it since I graduated. I have a Wii, so this is good news. As long as the game doesn't suffer playability issues from the downgrade in hardware this is a "FRICKIN' SOLD" when it comes out.

I see a shitty song and raise most of the Banjo-Kazooie Soundtrack as a counter to say this guy was good. Sorry, Taucer. Gotta disagree. I loved some of this guy's music and I can't tell you how long I had the main theme from B-K in my head when I first picked it up. A sad day, but maybe he'll move on to another company. A guy like him should be able to find work no problem in the business.

A relief to see you're feeling better, dude. Good to know that you're pushing forward. Hope you continue to feel better until you're 100%.

Neither did I, actually. I was surprised to see the jump and didn't think it would go well, but damned if I wasn't surprised. Now this? I was planning on picking up a 360 in the future, but this is just a bonus pretzel now.

Thirded. Dhsu's been good about his attitude on the server. Rambo's pretty much got that on the money.

I am offended by this statement and I can quit playing Sonic whenever I feel like it! I just don't want to. Sorry, have to be consistent. You know how it goes.