Triad Orion

Happy birthday, Arek. Hope your 20th is a good one!

You wound me, sir. I was having fun too. XD

Did you figure out that the whole drama was an April Fools' joke and post about it? If so, that's probably why. That's what happened to me, at least.

Lawls. Good stuff. I laughed. Also, A-1 is delicious.

(Scruffy the Janitor Voice) Second.

Actually, I believe the repair saucer that would bring your car back to the track was driven by a couple of Chao from the Sonic series. At least, that's what it looked like. Anyway, people who think this is the first mix up that the two will have? It's the first *announced* one. Brawl's due to come out before this, right? If that's the case, and Sonic is in it, (which is looking extremely likely at this point), Brawl would still be the first time Sonic and Mario meet on the same field to do battle. So, provided Sonic is in Brawl, and Brawl comes out before this game, you'll still have the Sonic versus Mario fight as the first time they'll encounter each other.

I third Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

It's what I've heard, and most people I've talked to have agreed that 5 is the best so far. I've heard AC0 was a disappointment comparitively. Though AC4: Shattered Skies is considered really good too, so that might be worth look.

It's frustrating, but yes. Shaking the remote with one hand does improve your Soul Gauge charge time. Make sure to move left and right to avoid the rapid-fire energy blasts and avoid the basic sword swings just by normal movement. If the energy blasts give you trouble, Time Break. If it looks like you can't avoid the sword slashes, you can Speed Break to avoid it. Charge between attacks and during the sword swings once you learn how to dodge them. Make sure you charge up your gauge as quickly as possible. After you stun him with his blast, use a Jump Dash to get in closer quicker, then go to town on him as normal. If you hit him hard enough, you can actually defeat him on two attacks on his heart. Also, if the boss is throwing a huge blast of energy at you and you see a Super Ring fly past, don't bother. Ignore the rings and Speed Break into the attack anyway. Once you get the hang of his attacks, he's not as tough as you might think.

The trick to Fire Emblem is to make luck a non-factor. If you know how to use your units correctly and move them properly, you can effectively eliminate luck as a damning factor, except in levelling up. Personally, that's a reason why I love Fire Emblem so much. You can either play it relying on luck or you can play cautiously and then improvise if something doesn't go quite your way.

That's exactly what makes a number of the endbosses so devious. Robotnik's using Sonic's greatest weakness. *Laughs*

Agreed on the second point. Though the real trick to beating the giant robot is patience. You can beat it as Knuckles' sucky jump, though it's hard. The trick is when the crosshair locks onto you, you only run slightly out of the way, turn around and whack Robotnik when he lands, because his body comes closer to the ground. Then you get your butt to the other side of the arena to avoid those damnable shooting arms.

Yup, there are eight Starposts total in Emerald Hill Zone, three in Act 1, five in Act 2. That means you technically have one screw-up and you can be Super Sonic before you even reach Chemical Plant Zone. The other plus side is you can rack up extra lives considering all the rings and item boxes regenerate every time you enter a special stage. And as for holding onto rings, I just generally get ticked off at myself if I get hit in most of the levels in 2-D Sonics. *Laughs*

Damn, of course Atilier Iris or Tales of the Abyss weren't on the PS2 list. That would've been convienent. Oh well... I might be able to get Future Perfect for a good deal. That'll work too.

...This song weirds me out. It's so damn cheesy I have a hard time hating it. The DDR pace struck me initially as almost blasphemous to Castlevania music, but yet the result is enteraining overall. I'm quite pleased with it; part of it is the refreshing new take on two of my very favorite Castlevania tunes. This song is just so... out there. I can't help but like it.

Now, before I regard you as a hero, are you referring to Legends or Battle Network with your Mega Man fanaticism? And for being on topic, Dead Rising has changed the way my roommate and I look at grocery stores. I see the Orange Juice and instantly think "Four boxes." Wine? "Five boxes." Cooking oil? "Heh heh heh, zombies are dumb." Don't get us started on shopping carts.

The reviews have thus far all gravitated around a 7 to a 7.5. All things considered, that's quite an improvement over the past few Sonic games. (Which is kind of sad.) But... it's a start. I'll look into renting the game this weekend.

Already prepared. I've had a bad feeling about new Sonic games since Shadow the Hedgehog was released. Ugh.

Because there's a general consensus that it's probably the only game that will be able to pull Sonic out of his current funk, and if that doesn't work, he's further in the hole.

Objection! *Bangs table* Fx was actually a good form to use in most situations, I believe. If you alternately tapped primary and secondary fire you could lay down a pretty good shooting rate. Moreover, shooting upwards was a big help in several areas. The only time at a distance that Fx is truly inferior to Zx is when you're fighting a boss. You'd probably be using Zx then anyway, provided you weren't already using Ox. Lx had its uses outside of the water too. Lx had better reach with the halberd than the ZX Saber or the Dual Hx Sabers. The Lx form was very nice for clearing out enemies just below you in midair. I used that form for several jumps where an enemy was waiting for me below. However, I will admit Lx's usefulness outside of its reach is pretty limited. And I agree with you about Px. It had some good things about it, but I think the Shadow Dash function should've been standard if the form was to really be useful. Anyway, getting back to Advent like the thread is intended: I'm actually looking forward to this one. From the news at Atomic Fire it sounds like you'll be developing the powers of the Model A as the game goes on. Nice if it's true. The ZX form of the first game was pretty good, but really it wasn't ideal for a lot of the game. If Model A is more modular, it might make for some interesting twists. Though I do wonder what other Biometals they could include? Craft is the only one that comes to mind immediately. Though I must say, I did like the exploration element of the first game. It was kinda fun trying to explore your way around rather than just having divided up levels like a traditional Mega Man game. It was a nice change; I think that sort of Castlevania-esque feel really made ZX a lot of fun. I sincerely hope that gets left in Advent. Hopefully they'll spill more of details soon. If Advent's anywhere near as good as ZX, I'll be satisfied for quite awhile.

Because R-Type is meant to do things: 1) Take all your quarters (because its difficulty is like that of an arcade game) 2) Put hair on your chest. Or make you pull it out of your head. Either one, really. Those older games were made back in a time when that kind of thing was more of a norm, and console games were often expected to be like their arcade counterparts. The harder, the better, usually. If nothing else, they provided a crazy amount of replay value because they are extremely hard to conquer. R-Type may be really frustrating at times, but it's a good reminder that there are really tough games out there; and it's one of those games that makes you feel empowered when you finally beat that level you've been stuck on. That's one of the major reasons why I like games like it. That... and getting humbled now and then is good for the gamer spirit. *Laughs*

Sonic Advance is usually deemed too slow for a Sonic game. Admittedly, I'd agree with the statement. Your character's run speed was a little on the pokey side for how fast you were supposed to be able to go. Moreover, another problem with the Sonic Advance series is really that you don't have enough view in front of you to see what's coming ahead, so it's quite easy to run into badniks that are just off of the screen. This problem got aggravated in Sonic Advance 2 when your running speed picked up to unseen levels in a 2-D Sonic game. Now you had maybe a quarter of a second to react to incoming enemies if you're going at full tilt, and maybe half a second to hit the jump button to avoid a potential death by falling in a bottomless pit. Which happened *a lot* in Sonic Advance 2. There were way, way too many pits in that game. And what's more, you basically could just hold down right on the control pad and hit jump a few times to clear the level for the first couple of zones. While to some degree you could do that in other Sonic games, usually by the second Zone you'd have to slow down to get through some dangerous areas, such as the crushers in Marble Zone, or the staircases and traps in Chemical Plant Zone. Now, it must be said, for all negative I've said about these two games, they're still pretty fun and certainly much better than their counterparts in the 3-D realm.

QFT. To add to the list, I really liked the old Bubsy games on my Genesis. Generic platformers they were, but I admit I had a lot of fun with them despite how punishing Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind was.

In theory, yes it is. But I think RealFolkBlues had something a little grander in mind when it came to seeing the sights of the game. Now, not actually having played Secret Rings yet, I can't tell just how cinematic the game is going to be, but it could very well be the realiziation of RFB's theory. We'll have to see when it comes out in about a week or so.

I'm afraid it's not that simple, BigBoss. Let's face it, Sonic isn't always going to be in 2-D because there's substantial demand for him to be in 3-D. While we love the 2-D games to death, not all of the market share does. And while I think seeing a new gen 2-D Sonic would be awesome, I doubt it'll happen. What Sonic Team and SEGA really need to work on is their 3-D games, and I think RealFolkBlues might be onto something with that cinemeatic view idea. Sounds like an interesting concept. Though I would add that with a camera like that, it takes a great deal of caution to make it work without it being jerky for the player while they're running along had super high speeds.