EC2151

No, it's not awesome. It is the DEFINITION of phoned-in. You know how Pirates of the Caribbean 2 ended on that really stupid cliff-hanger, meant ONLY to serve as a bridge to Pirates 3? halo 2's ending is like that. The ending just.. happens. After you beat that one ape dude (who's pretty tough), you're like, "Ok, Arbiter's story is done. Let's get back to Master Chief!" Then it shows Master Chief in space, and he says something like "Don't worry guys... I'm coming home to finish the fight" or something like that. So you're thinking "All right, MC! Let's do this! I can't wait to kick so-" THE END It (the game AND the ending) was short, felt rushed, and dammit it sure as hell was phoned-in.

Well, the 'real' ending was alright, I thought... A little on the monologue-y side, but I thought at the least things were wrapped up nicely. But hey, if you don't arbitrarily fight the last boss in this specific order of attacks, then fuck you here's your shit ending.

EDIT: THE QUESTIONS IN THIS OP HAVE BEEN ANSWERED So, I downloaded this on a lark... Or rather, I wanted to see how this was compared to the almighty OverClocked Geothermal Core that is FL Studio. I mean, it looks nice and all... but I don't know how to do jack shit. I mean, ANYTHING. I want to try it out and see what I can do with it as a DAW, but unlike when I started using FL (where I figured out basic things on my very first try), I've tried using this DAW at least 3 or 4 times and have yet to input a single note. Considering I was intrigued by Reaper for the fact that like FL it also uses the Piano Roll, this is especially frustrating. So what I am wondering is if any of you savvy OCR men and women can help me out with the VERY basics of Reaper that seem to be escaping me... These are very easily answered questions, so don't be too mad at me; however, sometimes these things just slip my comprehension. 1.) Even when I used (and use) FL, nothing I do on FL Studio is used with any of the presets that come with it. Because frankly, FL's presets suck dog dick, and no amount of filtering can change that. My sound library is obviously one that all of you are familiar with: basically a smattering of free VSTs, soundfonts, samples, and whatnot. What I am wondering is, how do I transfer these VSTs and soundfonts into Reaper's library? Is there a specific folder i copy them into? Do I just drag-n-paste, like I did with FL? Answering this question would be very helpful! 2.) This is embarrassing, but I can't for the fucking life of me get a piano roll to appear. No matter how many times I click "insert-- instrument track" or shit like that, I can't get anything. The "Edit your own Toolbar stuff" is pretty fucking confusing too; I have no clue what is going on, being bombarded with all of these options. If anyone has an optimal setup for the edit-able tool-bar I can blatantly copy, I'd appreciate that. As well, the main thing is... HOW DO I PUT NOTES INTO REAPER??? HOW DO I GET TO ITS PIANO ROLL!!!?!? 3.) To make anything sound good, you need filters and effects (at least in FL and a bunch of shitty free soundfonts/VSTs). I am wondering, how does one access the panel of similar features in Reaper? I know I'm at a disadvantage testing a new DAW, but i don't wanna go back COMPLETELY to square 1, you know. Though I doubt Reaper's effects if any are a match for the versatility of FL Studio. It may be my ignorance, or it might be that Reaper is VERY first-time-user-unfriendly. I dunno, though after struggling with this and that pdf Help document, I'm leaning towards the latter. A NOTE: To those who'll say "just read a FAQ", I'll politely decline your offer. To tell the truth, reading those FAQs teach me next to nothing, because I never get what I'm supposed to learn out of any of those things. I didn't learn FL by reading a FAQ, what I did was fiddled on my own, as well as (most importantly) I heavily consulted with a very experienced audio-producer who was well-versed in the ways of FL (and can make some really amazing songs to compliment his technical knowledge). I'm not all that ashamed to say that I wheedled and pestered this guy with a shitload of "how to" questions, and because of that I was able to make things that sound half-way decent to even faux-professional (or rather, "amateur"). So I learn the most when actual audio folks tell me what to do, not when some FAQ that doesn't respond to my questions tells me what to do. Sorry for the rant but I wanted to cut the curt replies to a minimum. I know anyone who is kind enough to answer this is going to have to take a lot of time out of their internet browsing to explain elementary shit, and for that I apologize; I shouldn't really be wasting your time. But I thank you for any and all assistance all the same. If I find Reaper to be an effective DAW, I may consider switching over to using that as my primary machine (though this perhaps is unlikely). Still I don't think answering these questions should be TOO hard, so even if I ultimately decide against using Reaper primarily, it shouldn't be too much skin off yer balls to tell me how to get the Piano Roll in Reaper, right? I hope.... : ( On a final note, there is no topic I've searched that covers these broad subjects like this (lol). If I missed one, I'll admit fault and kindly request a locking and appropriate merge. Also, if this is against a forum rule I've overlooked, I apologize and request a locking or advice on how to make the topic work within forum custom. In the very least, I hope with some intelligent answers, this can be used as a starting point for other folks interested in trying the DAW out but like me, has a hard time figuring this shit out.

hot leather saria x malon action.

Oh I've been working on something all right.

I may concede that from a story perspective, the ending to Borderlands may fit, but I think they could have done a LITTLE bit of a better job of making the player feel like he/she actually DID something worthwhile, outside of the high of actually beating the game. I mean, all of the Half-Life endings are really fucking huge cliff-hangers and shit like that (Good God where is my Ep3?), but by the time of the credits of each game, or even before, towards the end, I always have felt that I really accomplished something. And after fucking taking on all those Striders and Hunters in Episode 2, you're damn right I felt like I did something important! And like I said, not only is the gas's effects IMMEDIATE, they somehow stop people from realizing THAT TIME IS MOVING. ...How? How does that work? And then, there was the museum curator! He was from the outside! He knew the town's secret! But he never decided to tell anyone? He didn't mind living in a RUBBLE of a town? Gah, I'm sorry, for as much as I love the Layton characters, the endings of these games really boil me. After the entertaining and very compelling Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, I can safely say that the entirety of RD was a huge steaming pile of shit. The characters now sucked, outside of like 2 of them. The supports sucked (good Lord, what a way to ruin an FE game). Zihark, the very adamant Laguz savior, decides to join your fucking mercenary band WHICH SPECIALIZES IN KILLING LAGUZ. The villains sucked. "Moldy onions!" The "every character who died last game is still alive!!!!" sucked. And the ending, as per course, sucked cock. Oh hey remember that war we were fighting? Yaaaaaawn let's stop. OK! Oh by the way Micaiah, you're my long lost sister! K, bye. Oh by the way Micaiah, you're also a goddess or something! K, bye. -And Ike was never seen again- What a fucking let-down. It's not reallly a cop-out ending, but something about Final Fantasy I's ending, the whole "And by stopping the time-loop, you erased all records of your own heroic deeds" spiel always made me go "Aw for fuck's sake."

Sorry to go OT in my own topic, but dammit I love Link's Awakening. Not only that, Gollgagh, but everything is built up right to the right point. At the beginning, you're just sent exploring the island. Then the owl clues you in after Tail Cave that to leave the island, you'll have to wake the Wind Fish. You don't really know what that means, yet. So you go about, making friends with the various island inhabitants, helping them out (like Richard, Marin, the animals, the ghost, etc.), but it's only until the Face Shrine you learn the truth of the island, and that's what really sets the quest off. After that point, all the nightmares in the dungeons have the express desire to stop you from making the Wind Fish wake up (the level 8 boss taunts you with that fact: "DID YOU KNOW... IF YOU WAKE THE WIND FISH... EVERYONE ON THIS ISLAND WILL DISAPPEAR! HYEH HYEH HYEH... EVERYONE!"), so going into the Wind Fish's egg, you know EXACTLY what you're getting yourself into. Personally (this is me playing the game), you don't WANT to wake the Wind Fish; you've grown attached to everyone on Koholint. But towards the end, it seems like they've accepted their fate, and urge you to go on, because you're a hero and that's what heroes do. And of course, you fight the Nightmares/Dethl, who fight their hardest to keep the world from changing (so they can remain on top). But you defeat them, and you have yourself one of the more bittersweet endings in the Zelda franchise. -sniff- I love that game... OT: Borderlands. Fuck. Fuck. It really IS the equivalent of the one-screen NES endings back in the day. "THANK YOU FOR DEFEATING THE VAULT MONSTER. YOUR QUESTS WON'T GO UNOTISED. NOW THE MONSTERS HAVE BEEN SEALED FOR ANOTHER 200 YEARS. GO TO TANNIS TO COLLECT YOUR PAY. CONGLATURLATIONS ON PLAYING GREAT GAMES THE END ...?"

Besides, complaining about the stories in Mario games is like compaining that you have to pay for gasoline. Why? Besides, I'd think that Link's Awakening is anything BUT a cop-out ending.

No, Layton says that they're all illusions. Or at the least, that's what HE says and Layton is ALWAYS right apparently. And even if they WEREN'T (which is plausible), it's pretty damned hard not to NOTICE AGING. Yeah, that 5 year old kid somehow didn't notice THAT HE'S 55 NOW.

So, what are some games that you've played, no matter how good or how bad, how boring or charming, that when you got to the ending, you asked yourself "Well, why the fuck did I just play this game?" Because sometimes it's glaringly obvious that video-game writers don't know the first damn thing about telling a story. I'll post two, and see if anyone gives a damn enough to continue the topic. Your posts don't have to be as long as mine (who would even want to write that much?), but I just feel like ranting, so yeah. Obviously, this will be spoiler-filled. --------------------------- They should have called this game "Professor Layton and the Case of the Huge Fucking Plotholes" Really, you can buy into the whole story of Dropstone, of the 'vampire', of the mysterious city of Folsense and its interesting history behind it; it's quirky, it's got some sincerity to it, and best of all, it has a whole sense of mystery leading into it. You go into the climax thinking "man, this is going to be great!" and all the cool events inside the castle happen... And then Layton "solves" the whole mystery. I swear, in Curious Village it was KINDA weird for all the people to be fake. But to pull that off a SECOND time? REALLY? Not to mention all the mind-boggling questions it brings up, much more mind-boggling than any puzzle Layton threw at me. So, the people were fake and hallucinations, but they still were able to have memories and were aware of them being fake? And what about the people who WERE real... they just didn't realize that they had aged 50 years? That is some really fucking powerful gas underneath that castle, let me tell you. Oh yeah, and throwing in Don Paolo was completely pointless. And the whole unsettling "well Paolo left Flora bound and gagged in barn I guess we'll get her later LOL" was funny considering how monstrously ungentlemanly Layton took the situation. Phoned-in, man. Phoned-in. And the worst fucking part is is that I'll fucking buy the third game of the trilogy no matter what, most likely to be let down. Again. Because the people will all be time-traveling hallucinogenic robots or some shit like that. ------------------------ One of my all time favorite Wii games, it was a game I fell in love with the first time I saw the opening trailer for the mysterious "Project O". It's really a charming, fun, enjoyable, and inventive game (difficult too!), and it's a blast to play (which makes its poor sales and CiNG's bankruptcy bring a sad- to my -face). It was also one of those rare games that actually made me think about why I was playing, and why I was playing the game the way I was, much like how Contact DS made me examine how I treated the characters in the virtual game world, as opposed to just running along willy-nilly. In short, I cared about the characters, I cared about the little army of soldiers going into battle with me, and actually felt bad each time one of them died, so I tried my hardest to conquer the world with as few deaths as possible. Then we get to the end. The build-up is great. The big 'reveal' is touching and puts everything into perspective (all the misgivings I had about characters like Howser were erased in an instant), the final boss is very difficult, but appropriately so (who likes an easy final boss? Not me!), and then I get prepared for the ending... A comment on youtube sums it up well "LKS: Great game, terrible ending" After investing nearly 40 hours into the game, we get nothing. We get no closure. Not even an epilogue that said "and he ruled his kingdom happily ever after." No. Your wife gets eaten by a fucking rat, and you stand face to face with your maker, and the game ends. The End, thanks for playing. My goodness that was frustrating, and everyone who has played the game whom I've talked to (so like all 12 of them) basically echoed the same thing. They could have spent ONE more day just making an actual ENDING to the game, and it would have been perfect. But that mars what SHOULD have been a tour-de-force. Instead, all it is is a really great game. --------------------------- So those are my examples. What are some games whose endings really just sucked. Also: Don't say something like Resident Evil 1. Don't lie, that's one of the best fucking endings ever and you know it.

Though technically, youtube now can let you put up 15 minute vids.

The forum I administrate now is a place I had lurked for many many months before I finally worked up the courage to join. That is the case with about all of the forums I joined. Though I only lurked here for perhaps a few weeks years ago, but all i remember are some vague arguments about video-games and a user named atmuh. I DID try to join a long time ago (2007ish), but I never was sent a confirmation email, and all my emails to the admins/moderators of the forum were left unresponded to. ;_; Though my luck with joining forums seems to run that course; for fuck's sake sometimes i never get any confirmation emails for anything. So yeah, lurking is pretty cool bro; you should all try it sometime

No thanks necessary. Jus' doin' my job.

So I got Bit Trip Runner, and beat it in less than a week. It was fun times, and something to go back to every now and then. Now it's just 1000 points left (I also got Bass in MM10... Mistake, I should have gotten the extra stages instead!). So, now I gots to make choices. Wild Guns? or Super Ghouls n' Ghosts? I've played neither before, but I know they're both really good.

You know, I beat Zero 1 after some difficulty, but fairly conservatively (not a lot of cyber-elves, etc). I beat Zero 2 finding it relatively easier (aside from the final level where you fight the two beetle bros. at the same time), but without getting any of the EX skills (I'll work on that sometime later). Now, I'm playing Zero 3. Did they just decide to ramp up the difficulty for this one, or is it just me? I swear, I'm having a hell of a time getting to ANY boss (haven't done it yet!), I find these weird green doors that I go through and nothing seems to happen or change about the map, and everything is killing me and the lack of chain rod is busting my Mega Balls. Aye yay yay, how frustrating! I haven't beaten anything other than the damn intro stage! What gives? ----- As an aside, anyone play the ZX series? They any good?

Ok son, can you please post the audio tracks for us to remix?

I know that it's crazy to have (or try to have) an idea of what games are and what they should aspire to! Gunpei Yokoi and Pixelante are absolutely bonkers.

You have mastered the quote function, grasshopper. That is but the first step in a long journey!

The first page of a google search yields incredible results

I'm not saying the game is bad because it's dreamlike. I'm saying my philosophy of what a game should be is in direct contradiction with what Yume Nikki is, and I judge it according bad to that philosophy. Yes, it IS a totally "gaming" point of view, but that's the FIRST point of view I have when I play a game. Or at the very least I didn't really like anything this game had to offer me. As StandingInMotion said earlier, if you look at this as I do, as a game, then this is a bad game. The people who like this tend to look at this more like an 'experience' or 'interactive art' or something, and say it's good then. That may be, but I personally didn't like it neither as an experience or as art (or more accurately, I tried really hard to like it as I played but I got more and more frustrated with it as time went on to the point of loathing it); however, I can see why some people would enjoy Yume Nikki. As I said in my first post, I liked the sprites, and to that I'll add that SOME of the designs and SOME of the concepts were good (like the number of secrets each world held), atmospheric and all that. I just wish that these decent elements weren't surrounded by things like "the Red Maze" and "Lightpost Land." Things that MAY be surreal, and that MAY be the point of all of it, but they sure as hell aren't enjoyable. These elements lead me to the conclusions I stated in my first post. Notice in my first sentence of my first post which word I bolded. Of course, Bleck is right in saying that perhaps it was foolish of me to speak so disparagingly of a game in a thread clearly meant for people who liked the game (this isn't the first time I've argued about this game on the intrawebz with people who liked it).

Southern Face Shrine (and northern Face Shrine) are some of the best tracks in the game... Though that's not saying much, considering EVERY track in LA is really excellent. LA is the first game I've ever personally owned as my own, and I still say it probably has one of THE best soundtracks of any game I've played since. So your tastes, they are good.

It is by far one of the most god-awful, piece of shit, pretentiously bad games I've played in my life, by FAR. I could have made a better game in RPGMaker in less time. I will concede that some of the sprites are neat to look at. However, nothing becomes more frustrating than wandering around huge endless-scrolling parallax backgrounds with nearly NO landmarks, trying to find item X that MAY trigger event Y. Seriously, what the hell is with all these "1/64 chance of event Y happening" and "1/52 chance of event Z happening" bullshit that plagues the game? What about the Red Maze, which YOU HAVE TO GO INTO TWICE? A giant fucking labyrinth with no landmarks that you NEED to go into to get two effects? AND it also endlessly scrolls, making it virtually impossible to know where you're going? So you wander around big swaths of nothing hoping that something happens sometimes, but usually it's nothing. All of this is NOT GOOD GAME DESIGN. It's terribly designed! I don't mind when you try to make a serious game; I don't mind when you try to have this surreal non-story as the big hook (though I think THAT'S a little artsy-fartsy pretentious in this case). But when you make your game so damned tedious to play, either through lack of game design knowledge, or sheer malice, or the most likely, trying to be DEEEEP, that's when I hang up my hat and call "bullshit." And then there are all of these fan-theories, fan-music-remixes, and fan art of the game, while genuinely unique (and thought-provoking) games like Contact DS and Little King's Story get nada. Sorry for attacking something you dudes like, but I can't STAND this game.

Does Roll count? I mean, you COULD play as her in Powered Up..... .... I can ALWAYS fall back on Samus but I wanna try drawing something different for a change.

See, I am, because those 99 games regardless of quality set the standard for the use of the interface in the minds of the consumer. The consumer will get just as bored with "think 'A' to punch" as they eventually will with 3D. Which leads to a pretty fruitless generation of gaming, much like the current blase attitudes towards motion controls (at least MY blase attitudes towards motion controls). Besides, with some of your ideas it would needlessly complicate the experience. Sensors, ESPECIALLY mass-produced brain sensors, would never be able sense the subtleties of human emotion unless at its most broadest forms. How scared can I be once I realize that nothing can harm me? Or, the reverse, what if the thing reacts too much to my fear, causing actual psychological damage? Would any company be willing to tamper in the risk of MESSING with the consumer's BRAIN? They'd say hell no. A matter of months? What world do you live on, Dune?