Jump to content

yangfeili

Members
  • Posts

    224
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Posts posted by yangfeili

  1. They've tried to expand the Metroid universe a bit in the last few games, and I personally don't think it's gone all that great. I still cringe at the character designs for the other hunters, who look like they were pulled from Rise of the Robots.

    I've always appreciated Metroid's "less is more" approach to story and setting, which result in the feeling of a more expansive world filled with mystery. The irony is that when you over-develop a setting (as in the typical JRPG), it actually ends up feeling smaller because you know everything there is to know, you've seen everything there is to see, you've visited every place you can visit.

  2. I don't see why everyone is freaking out about the "Will work for free" line. When I saw that, I just assumed that meant he was looking around for anyone working on little freeware projects who might want some music (I see posts all the time from people looking for music for their game), not that he was trying to enslave himself to some commercial project for no pay.

    I mean... don't most of the people here contribute remixes for free?

  3. I can't help but think the effect would be better if keyboard cat videos were not explicitly labeled as such. You'd just be browsing around for funny blooper-style videos, and then bam keyboard cat randomly at the end.

  4. I've always wanted the chance to really get into pen and paper RPGs, but all I've done is some Shadowrun years ago and a tiny bit of Vampire: The Masquerade that a guy at my college was running. And I guess one game of D&D back in grade school using some super old set that my friend got at a garage sale for a dollar.

    I guess part of the issue is that I seem to go into pen and paper RPGs with somewhat different expectations than most of the people I've played with. I'm interested in the games for their ability to do what video game RPGs can't do. Complex character interaction, elaborate freeform schemes and weird approaches to situations. To that end, I often create characters who really aren't geared towards combat (which has the odd side-effect of making combat VERY interesting). Like in one of the few Vampire sessions we did, we were sent on a mission to kill a guy. I completely blew away the GM by taking advantage of the circumstances of our encounter to convince the target we were actually trying to protect him, and we ended up delivering him alive to our employers for interrogation (followed by execution).

    But it seems most of the people I've played with got their idea of what an RPG is from JRPGs: they just want to make damage rolls and commit random encounter monster genocide for a few hours. I guess I just need to find a like-minded group to play with. :\

  5. Thief I and II are possibly my favorite games ever. Seriously. The third one was okay, but had some issues with level design, gameplay, and the somewhat wonky story. (I liked the general idea, it's just that the execution was a little off.)

    I'll definitely have my eye on this... MY MECHANICAL ROBOT ZOOMY EYE.

  6. A while back I was trying to find videos of the fairly well-known Arai Akino, and somehow or another stumbled upon some stuff by the not-as-well-known Kakiage Nahoko, formerly of the Eccentric Opera. Since then, I've been pretty much listening to her various projects non-stop.

    They don't have a lot of my favorites up on youtube, but there's still some good ones:

    Solo:

    Film de l'Amour

    Eccentric Opera:

    Album with countertenor Nobuo Fujioka:

  7. Eh, they can change the battle all they want, but it doesn't amount to much as far I'm concerned. A real advance would be for the game to be more than just a battle system. You know, more like an actual RPG instead of just another random encounter monster genocide machine.

    As it is, the last several JRPGs I've played have been 50+ hours of a battle system that really only has enough to it to last for 20 hours without getting stale. (Except for Ys, but it's really a hardcore action-platformer thinly disguised as an RPG.)

  8. Imperial Repeaters for the win.

    My friends and I always used a weapon mod I made for the original Jedi Knight, where the Repeater fired Concussion Rifle shots. Needless to say, those were some very high frag-count matches. Storm Trooper Rifle + Sticky Rockets was also quite amusing.

  9. Best definition I've seen:

    http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2007/08/game-literacy.html

    The “Hardcore gamer” or gamer hobbyist therefore represents a player with high videogame literacy. Such a player can play any and all games they choose – they have the requisite knowledge to do so – although the actual games they enjoy will vary from person to person. They require little or no tutorial for a game that fits into their existing experience comfortably – perhaps just an explanation of how the conventions of the new game differ from their expectations. A typical gamer hobbyist will have acquired between 15 and 50 man months of experience playing games, and will also have played 20 to 100 different games in that time. (Note that when I say ‘man month’, I mean a month of continuous play time totalled up).

    The “Casual gamer” therefore becomes the player with low or limited gamer literacy. This is an explanation for the simplicity of successful Casual games like Zuma, Bejewelled, Bookworm and Solitaire – to succeed in an audience with low gamer literacy, one must make games that do not require this domain-specific knowledge. Thus a successful Casual game draws from experiences familiar to people from outside of videogames – accuracy (for Zuma), logic puzzles (for Bejewelled), word puzzles (for Bookworm) and card games (for Solitaire). Equally, a successful Casual game requires the player to learn only two or three rules. Thus, the barrier to entry is lowered.

  10. You play as a dude dressed in green with a floppy hat.

    They're all cutesy.

    For the most part, although I think you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find much of anything cute in Zelda II. Except maybe some of the artwork in the manual, but even that's not really so much cute as it is standard late 80s anime-esque.

    Now some of the artwork from the original Zelda is pretty darned cute, and I think it would be kind of neat to see them do another big cel-shaded game, but with that art-style rather than another with WW football head.

    So... instead of Steam punk we have Steam fantasy?

    It's

    . And quite well, I might add. (Well, okay, the third one was a bit wonky.)
  11. One of the first remixes I ever downloaded from here was "Feena Flow" from Ys... and all these years later it's still the only Ys remix on here. Ys, for crying out loud!

    And really the same goes for all of Falcom's games. The quality of the Gurumin soundtrack really surprised me... still no remixes yet, even though it got a US release. :(

    Even their really obscure games have awesome music!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5DPtoFlGd8

  12. The standard turn-based, menu-based gameplay in both oldschool RPGs and current RPGs is pretty lame. But I still find the older games playable because they're short enough that the lameness of the gameplay doesn't become overwhelming, as it does in the modern bloated 50+ hour vaguely interactive anime episodes we've been getting.

    I had always imagined that JRPGs would take advantage of new technology to expand their gameplay beyond being nothing but a "battle system." That's just one small part of what makes a real RPG, not the single defining feature. But instead, all they've really done is take the same old games we've been playing since forever, made them a bit flashier, and stretched their already thin gameplay even thinner...

  13. I think people are going a little overboard, although I know it's all well-intentioned. I wouldn't start freaking out until AFTER you've contacted them about it and then been told "Screw you, we're gonna make you pay it." More likely than not, you'll call, say "Hey, I got this wacky bill," and they'll say "Oops, sorry, we'll fix it."

    That's pretty much what happened when my previous university sent me a bill for a semester during which I did not attend: I rang them up, said WTF, and they told me to disregard it.

  14. Symphony had its flaws (such as NO gameplay balance whatsoever), but there's one thing it did that I haven't seen any of its imitators do nearly as well: secrets. The GBA and DS games might have a secret room here and there with an item in it; SotN had entire optional secret REGIONS of the castle, often with their own extra boss.

×
×
  • Create New...