yangfeili

WANT: Book BLAME!, vol. 4, by Tsutomu Nihei It's the only one I'm missing.

Everyone here should just play this: http://www.skipmore.com/freegames/synopsis/synopsis.html An oldschool JRPG with all the filler cut out.

Not since... that day.

Lately I've been listening to a lot of old stuff by Zabadak, which is kind of like Japanese-Celtic Progressive Folk Rock.

Am I the only one who found Okami kind of mediocre? I'd been looking forward to it since it was first announced, preordered and everything. It started out pretty good, but as I got further into it, it really started to feel like a bit of a drag. The dungeon/puzzle design didn't feel quite up to snuff, and the combat needed a little something more to it, but I think the biggest issue was simply the pacing, which felt painfully and unnecessarily slow, especially in the second half. (Wind Waker had a similar problem.) I guess I felt like it degenerated from what could have been a fun gameplay-centered action-adventure to JRPG levels of story-centric inane chatter and corny writing. When they pulled that excessively long and entirely unnecessary "EVERYBODY CLAP YOUR HANDS AND BELIEVE" cutscene in the middle of the final boss fight, I was rolling my eyes so hard that I was in danger of suffering a detached retina. At least it looked nice and had some good music in spots. Keep that, cut out the fluff, and beef up the gameplay, and it'll be solid.

I don't really have anything to contribute, but I just wanted to post to fit in.

Ohhhh, okay, I've already got World of Goo, but I went ahead and did it. Looks like some neat stuff. The only one I wish I could swap out is Mr. Robot and put in Starscape instead, based off of playing the demos for both waaaaaay back when they first came out. (Mr. Robot looked like a really cool isometric puzzle-platformer at first, until the clunky boring JRPG-esque battle system kicked in and I said "Hrmm.")

I'm bothered by the fact that copyright infringment is punishable by prison at all. A fine? Sure. But prison time? The legal system has been hijacked. Heck, it really should probably be a civil matter rather than a criminal matter.

This is interesting, because I've said something similar with a bit of a twist: there are a lot of games now which are absurdly easy because they think they have a great story, and difficult gameplay would serve as an obstacle to presenting this "brilliant" story to the player. Final Fantasy is a good example of a particularly flagrant offender. Regardless, I think Strike911 was trying to point out the difference between games with carefully crafted difficulty VS games which are difficult because of crappy controls, poor balance, or they just spam enemies everywhere in a nonsensical manner (such as the classic "unavoidable enemy spawns right in front of you while you're in the middle of jumping over a hole" gag.) In other words, a game can be difficult due to EITHER good or bad design, with the resulting experience either being "tough but rewarding" as opposed to "obnoxious and frustrating."

It's funny you mention Battletoads. Now, I've never actually beaten the whole game, largely because I get kind of bored with it after a while. But as a kid, I remember that hover bike level was murder. I spent hours trying to get through it, and I usually used the warp in the middle rather than seeing it through to the end. I found a copy of the game a few years ago. Popped it in without having played the game for... gosh, fifteen years, maybe? Anyway, I beat the entire hover bike stage with only one death -- and that was due to a premature jump rather than hitting a wall. I think to myself "Wait, what? That's it?"

I made a little something in Electroplankton once using Audacity to record a couple parts over each other and move them around a bit. http://ofadam.com/macroidtoe/dump/Holy%20Plankton%20Ocean%20Temple.mp3 Aaaaaaaaand that's the the full extent of my musical accomplishments. I guess I could pop in my old copy of Mario Paint and load up whatever's saved on it from 15 years ago. Probably just random notes thrown around in an indiscriminate manner. Which, based on the whole "Shakespeare, monkeys, typewriters" principle could in fact be a work of pure genius.

I was thinking this was going to be a comparison of different boards reacting to news. e.g. OCRemix: Fairly reasonable discussion of a game or system's flaws and strengths VS GameFAQs: Psychotically swinging to one extreme or the other. Someone should make that chart.

You know, I've had a European copy of Shenmue 2 for several years now, but I've never been able to get very far in it because it often crashes when loading between areas. I don't know if it's the boot disc I'm using or what, but if there's any suggestions relating to the issue, I'd certainly like to sit down and finally play through the darned game.

I'll second Toy Commander. It looks like some cheap shovelware at first glance, but it's actually got some really inventive levels and gameplay. Another one I enjoyed was Elemental Gimmick Gear. Kind of like an overhead Metroid/Zelda fusion.

Yeah, that's what I figured. We'd probably be better off looking for something specifically focused on 2D games or with some sort of "First Timers" category. We're really just doing it for the sake of being able to say "Holy shit, we actually made a game," but sticking it in some little competition might be kind of fun, if we could just find the right one to enter it in.

I didn't see anything about giving up rights, except for the part about the competition owning any physical media or materials you send them (basically so they don't have to send it back to everyone). And I guess if you actually got a publishing contract, there'd probably be some adjustment of rights. With that said, I'm curious if anyone knows if this has been held before, and what kind of games are usually entered and/or win? I've actually been doing the graphics for a little game with a couple of friends of mine (the programmer has finished almost all of his part while on vacation in Japan... it's a trans-Pacific project! ), and we could probably have things done by October if I sped things up a bit on my end (and the soundtrack guy did the same). It's a simple retro-inspired 2D puzzle platformer, mostly centered around block-pushing puzzles, with various types of blocks with different properties and effects. It's the first time for any of us working on anything like this, but I think we've got something on our hands with a surprising level of polish for a bunch of total noobs. A couple of early screenshots, just testing out some of the tilesets to make sure everything connects properly: 1 2 Not sure if that's the sort of thing they go for, or if its more like a big super deluxe 3D extravanganza.

You can adjust the controls to have mouselook on, plus set the keyboard keys to strafe rather than turn. It's in the options somewhere. It's pretty much a must if you're playing an archer. As for killing things early on: I always (ALWAYS) answered the "create a character" questions in such a way that I started with an ebony dagger. Makes things much easier at the beginning.

Metroid and Ys stole their "Item Get" jingle from each other. Or both stole it from some common third source. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyFeGs5xeV0

These may be of interest. Although they're kind of hard to find. I lucked out and got the last huge set (the 2700 piece cube that they don't make anymore) at a local education museum... and then found another marked down to half price a few months ago at some little toy store in a small town I stopped off at on the way to somewhere else.

I just noticed the Pony Canyon link on the she website, which brought to mind Nahoko Kakiage, formerly of the Eccentric Opera. Maybe not quite what you're looking for (perhaps a bit too Bjork-esque), but... uh... well, there you go.

Wait, they're freaking out about these "Grass-Eating Men" when they've got stuff like happening on a regular basis?

I always thought the ending to LoI seemed like a total setup for a game where you play as Dracula himself. Newly created vampire who has a magical stone that absorbs the power of other vampires? It's freaking Castlevania: Mega Man Edition!

Very nice, I've given it a quick listen, and I'm hearing a bit of a Falcom-esque vibe to some of those upbeat tracks that I really like. I could seriously picture Synphetic Aspiriations in particular as being a background track for an Ys game.

Hrrrmmm, just looks like more of the Devil May Cry Lite COMBOCOMBOCOMBO gameplay they've already tried twice. Not terribly impressed.

I'm guessing that's part of the idea: that this is a creature capable of both endearing love and friendship, but also outbursts of terrifying and dangerous ferocity. I anticipate some heart-wrenching ending which plays on this.