EC2151
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Posts posted by EC2151
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Thanks for talking about Metroid Other M, finally.
Though I tend to think that since Sakamoto was full writer, director, and producer, as well as th interviews leading up to the game stressing just how much creative control he had over the game's delivery of the plot, I tend to lay nearly all of the blame on him (though he did have the good sense to stop D-Rockets from putting ZSS in a lot more scenes).
I also think that the seph's call for more banter between Adam and Samus, establishing a relationship, would have been good for fleshing things out, but from a Metroid perspective it would have made things way too chatty in a game that needed those long stretches of silence whenever it could actually find it.
Then again, I don't think there should have been any real dialogue at all (Prime and Echoes showed us the power of environmental story-telling, as well as the effectiveness of lore recovery!), but hey, less is more.
The story is just plain awful. And the gameplay, ultimately suffers from the linearity (which is a product of the terrible story Sakamoto penned). I mean, I am sure the guy who gave us the beauty that was Super Metroid can do better, but he should stay farrrrrr away from a writer's pen, ever again.
A lot of folks on the Metroid forum I go to get really heated up about this subject- some cannot stand the game with any fiber of their being, while others will defend and rationalize it to the death. I'm not in either category, but I can't play Other M without getting pissed off at all of the terrible design choices. Heck if a shmuck like ME could see them, it makes me wonder why Nintendo, Team Ninja, and D-Rockets couldn't.
You did mention inner-company politics, but with Sakamoto so heavily emphasizing his role, I can't help but feel that he is largely responsible for the blunder.
I think it a little telling that the show said "when you have such an important brand character and you are making a backstory, you have to be careful, and consider EVERYTHING you've established up to this point"
Juxtapose that with Sakamoto's "I never really gave thought to Samus' character until working on Other M"
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Nice to finally see some love for Knights in the Nightmare. One of the best DS games I've played- lots of fun.
As well, Might and Magic does have a horrendous difficulty curve, but hey at least it's fun.
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I don't know why everyone complains about the loss (nay, the audacity of such a removal!) of being able to whip in 8 directions. Yeah it was neat but Rondo of Blood was designed to where you didn't need to whip in 8 directions and it's pretty much the best of the classic CVs in my opinion.
Don't get me wrong, in CV IV it was a nice feature (outside wonky grappling controls), but people treat subsequent CVs like they removed one of the core features of the game!
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From a subjective standpoint, the Gamecube offered a lot more games than the N64, and a lot more games of high quality, I felt. A lot of franchises saw some of their better, or some best releases (F-Zero, Wind Waker, Smash Bros.). You can make the same argument for the N64 iterations, but that's why I said from a subjective standpoint.
To be fair, I'd rate the NES right after the GC for me, personally. While all of the great franchises got their start there, the better iterations were to be found on the SNES and beyond (like Mega Man, Zelda, Metroid, Mario- though that last one is debatable, b/c Mario 3 lol). The NES is awesome, yeah, but I just have an irrational love for the little purple box. And a rational love for all of the great games that were on it.
With the N64, the only games I kept after selling the fluff were Nintendo titles, and rare titles.
At least with the Wii, there are a lot of good selections from non-Nintendo companies, despite Nintendo policy with the Wii being absolute and utter shit.
To segue back into the main topic (but feel free to disagree or call me stupid or something), I would like to see Nintendo pursue a path with this next whatever-it's-called that is different from the path that they took with the Wii. I think anyone who bought the Wii for the (and i hate using this term) "casual" games are not going to switch to a new system to buy a new version of WiiSports, so Nintendo would obviously have to do something else to get people purchasing systems.
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N64 had a lot of good games, yeah, but it is easily Nintendo's worst home-console ever released, with the Wii being after that. This mainly has to do with the fact that the whole cartridge bs drove virtually all meaningful third-party support from nintendo, leaving us with a really small library of great and awesome nintendo games (as well as the last gasps of Rare), but little else.
The SNES was the best Nintendo console released, and in my opinion, the Gamecube was second best. It was kind of like Nintendo's version of the Dreamcast- not a lot of support, but a whole lot of love. That and the GC has what has to be my favorite video-game controller of all time.
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Episode 3 would supposedly taking place on (or center around) the Borealis, an Aperture-built cruiser/refueling ship with portal technology.
Considering at the end of Episodes 1 & 2, the Combine portal tech is disabled, I'd imagine Ep3 would be a mad-dash between Gordon, Barney, Alyx, and the resistance against the Combine and the Advisers to destroy the ship before the Combine reactivate the portal to their home dimension. Of course, considering how the endings of the HL series has been up to this point, at the end G-Man will just freeze time and open the portal to the Combine for lulz and then black-screen HALF LIFE TWO EPISODE 3 and credits roll.
I really wish this game would drop in price sometime. I feel that the game is roughly twice as long as its predecessor, but that still amounts to a relatively short (yet fun) game. $50 for a 12-hour game is not something I want to shell out at this moment...
Though if I wanted I guess I could buy the PS3 version at gamespot, take out the code, and sell it back and 'purchase' the game for roughly $35... But that's still alot.
Not being able to read any of these spoilers is killing me.
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I'll laugh my ass off when it's a Wii add-on a la 32x
All you have to do is insert the device into the four gamecube controller ports!
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Ehh, the only foolish and silly thing about Fusion's plot I felt was the whole super-duper coincidence that Samus names her CO ADAM because it reminds her of Adam, and lo and behold, the computer actually IS Adam!
but it's hard to work characters in 4 games into the story. Just look at Other M.
Other than that though I felt Fusion's plot to be a pretty cool look into the Post-Super world Samus finds herself in, and the X to be pretty compelling antagonists.
In any event, Fusion did the overrun research station/GFED corruption/secret metroid program a HELL of a lot better than Other M did.
And lol, Symphonia DID have a terrible, grating plot.
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Ha, it's out for $15.
If no one has played it yet, they might as well pick it up by now. I mean hell, I just bought G-Darius for the PlayStation for $15 and that is worth well more than fifteen dollars in comparison to Metroid Other M.
And the fact that several near-launce or first-gen Wii games are still at $50 is pretty damn stupid and annoying, but that's a topic for another day.
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Which gives us even less reason to play the game removing the one exploratory element from it.
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The big problem with that scene is that historically the first thing samus ALWAYS did when meeting ridley in the games was whip out her super missiles and pound Ridley's ass into oblivion.
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go eat a dick, sega. Have fun running your franchises into the ground with your shitty devs and programmers.
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rumor mill rumor mill let's all go to the rumor mill
Hey guys, my uncle works at Nintendo and says they're making Eternal Darkness 2!
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You know, something I always wonder for these early tracks, is that, why did Nobuo never put like a drum/noise track into any of them?
A lot of the early FF music from the NES games sound like they only use 2 or 3 tracks.
(another song worth remixing)I'm not saying that when you make an 8bit song, you need to use all four tracks, but I was always curious about the reason. Stylistic? Technical limitations? Nobuou being unfamiliar with programming?
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team ninja made the game itself aka all of the parts that were actually good
the asinine chauvinist story was penned by Yoshio Sakamoto, who has convinced himself that he is the father of Metroid games
and refers to Samus as his "daughter"
Now, if that doesn't make the story of Other M reallllly realllllllly creepy, I don't know what does.
And while I love the Prime games, I think the sidescrolling formula is a little better.
Now, Prime and Echoes are two of my all-time favorite games, but so are Super and Zero Mission, ya dig?
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Nintendo didn't really make Other M, Team Ninja did most of it. You can feel their influence everywhere. Though the main director of the series was involved, not sure how he let the project go so astray.
He was probably so busy writing his shitty fanfic of a story to notice.
I can tell you that if I was the head of this project, I would have noticed some obvious glaring fucking faults. Like, you know, the Where's Waldo segments (which were retarded). And the forced slow-walks (which were retarded). And the authorization (which was retarded). The fact that Sakamoto either ignored these things (if you take a good interpretation of his actions), or (the bad) actively pushed for all of these things to be included (since he had so much control over everything being writer, director, and producer)... It REALLY makes me question his aptitude as a game developer if he can make such shitty, shitty, shitty decisions for a franchise whose entries have all essentially been top-tier in quality.
Team Ninja made have made the gameplay and level design and bosses and whatnot, but ultimately Sakamoto emblazoned his name right there in the fucking first spot of the credits, and all the interviews maintained that this was his show. So really, this is Sakamoto's deformed baby.
Nintendo SHOULD make another Metroid themselves as the ones that R&D1 did by themselves are the best (MI, II:RoS, III:Super, IV:Fusion, Zero). Retro did a great job making the series a FPS, but its still a FPS version of the series and not the way the series is meant to play.Neither is Other M though. Thats a bralwer / Ninja Gaiden (modern) clone that someone mixed Metroid into and broke its controls horribly.
If I can recall correctly, Intelligent Systems were the main workers of Metroid Fusion and Metroid II, whereas R&D1 worked mainly on Metroid and Super Metroid (and ZM? Wasn't R&D1 kaput by ZM?). Of course there must have been overlap though.
I think Intelligent Systems, if given the chance, can make another Metroid game. Not only are they a quality developer, but if their track record is what I think it is they know how to make a really GOOD linear Metroid game. Metroid II is a classic as far as I'm concerned, and Fusion I think is the third best in the series, after Super Metroid and Prime.
Personally I think they should get Epic / Cliff Bleszinski to do it, because Shadow Complex is the closet thing we've gotten to a modern Metroid outside of the indie scene.
That's a game I really need to play, since everyone always talks about it. No 360, though (lol I spent all my money on my Sega Saturn).
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I don't mean to meaninglessly bump a topic 4 months later, but I thought I might as well add some things (since I'm such a huge Metroid fan):
-This game is now being sold for $15, new, on Amazon. It has been less than a year.
-According to VGChartz, Other M has sold roughly 800,000 units worldwide, since its launch 7 months ago
Not terrible (I still think it's a crime that Muramasa: The Demon Blade only sold 19K and Little King's Story sold 23K), but for a game with this budget, that's a flopper right there.
Though on a larger and more hopeful note, Retro is working on a new game, one that they say "everyone wants us to do"
You think Nintendo realized that they themselves are not too good at making a Metroid game right now?
I can only hope.
To tell you the truth, some of my opinions on this game have softened somewhat considering I haven't really played this in so many months. Though I have a feeling that if I were to pop it back in, all the things I had forced out of my memory would come back and annoy the ever-living fuck out of me.
To Other M's credit, I loved the enemy design, and I loved seeing all the classic enemies now in beautiful 3D and act like living, breathing monsters. I just wish I didn't fight the same three variations of sidehoppers all the fucking time. And I think Other M was able to nail down the derelict space station feel in a way that Fusion didn't really pull off for me. While both in Fusion and in Other M, I never felt I was anywhere else but a big metal ship (despite all the differing "ecospheres"), Other M pulled it off a lot better, as can be expected. Fusion is the better game over all, though.
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I don't know how easy it is to find Iannis Xenakis, Harry Partch, Gyorgy Ligeti, Steve Reich, or Franco Donatoni on itunes, but I imagine it's fairly difficult. Hell, it was hard to even find a CD of Delusions of the Fury by Harry Partch.
Since I don't have an MP3 player, and I doubt those men and their entire output would be availiable for digital distribution, it's CD for me.
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Argh, I was dicking around with this program last night instead of writing a paper for university.......
>_>
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Why in flaming f*** have none of you mentioned God Hand?
The best 3D beat-em-up of all time, AND Clover's best game, and no one mentions it.
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What I like about Drake's version is the fact that everything i make sounds like something Steve Reich wrote.
Though the original's reverb is definitely a plus.
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I love the differing choice of instruments, man. Awesome, awesome work.
It's the second step towards a really awesome application, I can feel it.
The only thing I can really recommend is the implementation of some sort of save feature, but other than that, it's really pretty cool (I like using the new age pad myself).
EDIT: In your application, are there still oscillators? I think there are, but I'm not sure (by oscillators I mean the white squares that are in a circular motion).
DOUBLE EDIT:
Don't answer that question; I just found out that yes they're still there. Excellent.
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I wish you could actually place oscillators onto the grid, instead of having them show up by chance.
Unless there IS a way and I don't know about it... :/
Most underrated games of all time
in General Discussion
Posted
Not sure about all time, but defnitely this generation (for the Wii, at least) saw two fantastic, underrated games slip by despite good reviews:
Little King's Story
and
Muramasa: The Demon Blade
Heck, combined, the two only sold roughly 750,000 copies worldwide. Hell, Little King's Story has yet to reach 250,000, dooming it to 'failure' status among the business types of the world.
It's a shame, because LKS (outside of an overly abrupt ending) was one of the most fantastic Wii games i've played, and the best Wii game I played in 2009; I was captivated with the game ever since I saw the charming trailer for "Project O" years ago on IGN. Beautiful, colorful, cheery, great soundtrack... I feel like i'm in that special club that actually OWNS the darn thing.
And Muramasa, despite being lots of fun, and fun to mess around exploring and using combos, the game was just beautiful. It seems to have sold better (almost half a million, and now, more than Odin Sphere), but it's hardly well-known outside of "gamer" circles.