So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition

Retr0gamer

Interesting. Wouldn't have thought that the sound would have caused load times since it's not anything special in that category. Star Ocean uses the same chip but there's a lot less sprite data it has to decompress of the fly.

the_syco

Came across "8-Bit Commando" which looks like a good laugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7_77vc074w

johnny_ultimate

SpaceChem is my new favouritist game ever. This is my proudest moment thus far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nB-Rbrytsw

I know: it's pretty much like watching porn. Really clinical, science-based porn.

DinoRex

I started on Xenoblade Chronicles yesterday.

Enjoying it a lot. The chain attacks took me a while to get the hang of but I think I have the combat down now.

It has a very old school JRPG feel, but it has been nicely updated for a modern age and they've put a lot of work into it so it isn't needlessly frustrating. For instance if you die, it's not a game over screen, you go back to a check point with your XP in tact.

o1s1n

I really have to go back to Xenoblade. Was enjoying the hell out of it until Dark Souls came along. Which well and truely banished all games I'd been playing up until that point to a dusty corner.

Thinking about it, I was finding the battle system great until I got to a boss about 12 hours in. Can't remember his name, but you have to build up combos by attacking small enemies and then unleashing a combo on the big boss.

Just couldn't get the hang of it though and ended up rage quitting. Found it odd as up until that point the battle system seemed to have been working really fluidly.

Retr0gamer

The dying and not losing your XP thing has been around in JRPGs since the start of time, more accurately since Dragon Quest

However it's definitely the most progressive JRPG since FFXII. The big difference is that unlike FFXII the battle system actually works and it's not a slog to get through. It's got a real time battle system similar to western RPGs but also has a variety of techniques you have to use in combos to hit enemies with status effects that adds much needed strategy that is missing from most western RPGs and FF12.

If you are getting stuck on a boss it's usually because you aren't levelling up enough. There's no point grinding for levels, the quickest way to level up is to do as many quests as you can since you get massive XP rewards for completing them. I found I had to tell this to a lot of people almost giving up on the game but once they understood this it was plain sailing. The side quests are very streamlined, for example if you are told to collect an item there's usually no need to return it to the quest giver and most quests are usually completed as you ramble about the world. It also helps that the world is so gorgeous and a joy to explore that I don't mind doing the side quests. You can level up in a matter of minutes doing side quests and if you are having trouble on a boss just remember that Xenoblad eis a game where even 2 or 3 levels can make a massive difference and that's usually all it takes.

I must get back to it but have skyward sword to beat first. I got side tracked by dark souls as well.

o1s1n

I didn't know that about the side quests! Cheers for that, it explains a lot.

I found there were so many of them it was a bit overwhelming and I was just trying to go on with the main quest instead.

As for Skyward Sword, I must be the only person who isn't really interested in playing it. After going through OOT again so recently on the 3DS I'm completely and utterly 3rd person Zelda'd out.

Retr0gamer

There's tonnes of side quests but you don't have to do them all, just enough to level up a bit. I like doing as many as I can and usually end up over levelled for the area and the boss.

Skyward Sword the first Zelda that i'm not excited about playing. Have played the first 3 hours and not felt really compelled to go back to it.

DinoRex

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Skyward Sword the first Zelda that i'm not excited about playing. Have played the first 3 hours and not felt really compelled to go back to it.

I was enjoying it, but there are just so many pointless annoyances in it that it just wore me down in the end. I'll probably go back to it eventually though.

I'm also playing Ghost Recon for the 3DS and it's fantastic. Shame they spent a lot of money on a license that probably actively put a lot of people off a great game.

Doge

the_syco wrote: »

Came across "8-Bit Commando" which looks like a good laugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7_77vc074w

That looks absolutely fantastic, thanks for that!

valleyoftheunos

After ignoring my family for hours on end between christmas eve and st. Stephen's day in order to play through Minish Cap I spent last night playing through the final Dungeon only to repeatedly have my a$$ handed to me by Vaati.

I may or may not bother going back to put the finishers on it but I absolutely adored every minute of it. The pacing of it was spot on, the world engaging and begging to be explored fully and fusing Kinstones became a little bit addictive. Playing on the original Hardware really improved the experience for me also.

Am a bit sad that it is all but done which I think is probably one of the highest compliments that can be paid to a game, will have to look at Link's Awakening and the Oracle games now.

DinoRex

valleyoftheunos wrote: »

After ignoring my family for hours on end between christmas eve and st. Stephen's day in order to play through Minish Cap I spent last night playing through the final Dungeon only to repeatedly have my a$$ handed to me by Vaati.

I was never able to defeat him either back in the day. Hope to try again on the 3DS.

johnny_ultimate

Minish Cap was the last great portable Zelda game. I consider the Wind Waker sequels to be a dark age of repetitive dungeon design and unnecessarily time consuming overworlds. Moments of brilliance, but I gave up on both with a sigh well before finishing them (although later returned to Phantom Hourglass)

Retr0gamer

Only played the phantom hourglass but didn't like it that much at all. It was a walk in the park and didn't grab me at all. Loved Minish Cap though but my favourite portable zelda's are the oracle games, so difficult but so rewarding. Which reminds me... I never did finish links awakening

Nintendo should get capcom flagship back to zelda games.

o1s1n

Phantom Hourglass was great! Repeating the same dungeon a lot was a bit of a pain, but I really really enjoyed that game.

Spirit Tracks on the other hand, meh. Gave up on it pretty early. The whole train driving thing was wreaking my head.

Andrew76

Gave up on Phantom Hourglass too, just never warmed to the stylus controls for movement and attacking. Can't remember if there was an option to use the d-pad like the other handheld versions.

pdbhp

Gave up on Phantom Hourglass about half way through myself, there wasn't anything wrong with it per se but it just came across as bland,must get back into it though as my missus played through the whole game and loved it.

johnny_ultimate

I'm not quite sure what it is about Phantom Hourglass, because I do love Wind Waker, and they did tidy up certain aspects of that. Think it was the stealth sections that got me. And while they improved them for Spirit Tracks - and had some fun, unexpected subversions of 'em too - I agree with Andrew that the train was just a bad idea. An unnecessarily frustrating process getting from place to place.

o1s1n

I told myself I wouldn't buy anything else for the 3DS until I'd finished my current lot, but couldn't resist Mighty Switch Force.

Lovely game! The sprite art really works well with the 3D effects. Feckin steal for 6 euro.

valleyoftheunos

Phantom Hourglass was the first Zelda game I ever played to completion, For whatever reason I kept coming back to it even after months of hiatus. yes all the sailing was tedious at times and it was a bit too easy but it was a world I wanted to explore and I really liked the controls.

Spirt Tracks was much the same, I wanted to see all of Hyrule and to meet all the characters in it, the Train idea was a little weird but then again its Zelda, its not to worried about making sense.

unky chop chop

Giving Rainbow islands a good going over at the moment.
What a game.
Just downloaded the xbox version tonight as well...Absolute pile of crap.
wtf...I turned it off in disgust after 5 minutes.Graphics,sound,gameplay..all mangled and ya can't even change to original

DinoRex

Managed to pick up a second hand copy of Heavy Rain this week for a tenner.

I'd started playing it before, but the copy I was playing belonged to my ex-flatmates, ex-boyfriend. She dumped him because he was an evil sociopath (no really, the guy had 2 fiances on the side) and I never got to complete it.

Of course I turn on my PS3 I have updates to install... and then a 1.2GB update to Heavy Rain.

Turns out it's been updated to the Playstation Move version, which is nice that they give it free to people who had just bought the regular version of the game but I don't have the Playstation Move so it would have been nice to have been given the option of the pointless install.

johnny_ultimate

Don't even get me started on PS3 updates. I'd be almost certain the Disgaea 4 updates I've installed are bigger than the game itself.

As for Heavy Rain, yet another game to add to the 'stop playing half an hour before the end' sort of game story A game whose ambition I admire, but whose execution is shambolic.

DinoRex

I wish Nomad Soul would get a release on Gog. Would love to play it again... never did finish it the first time around.

Although just looking at it's Wiki entry it seems it had a Dreamcast version, I did not know that.

pdbhp

Danny Phantom - Urban Jungle on GBA. Sounds shít but it's actually a shmup and not a bad one at that.

D4RK ONION

Jamestown. Lots of it! Stuck on "The Luge" challenge. It's one of those things I know isn't all that hard but I just cannot get past it. Possibly because playing the 3 minute stage before the boss appears has, at this point, become soul-destroyingly easy.

Also if anyone wants a few games of Alpha 2 on GGPO, let me know

Myrddin

Just finished Battlestations Midway on the 360, inspired by a bit of Saving Private Ryan over the xmas. It's only for the naval buffs, not very 'sim' either, very arcadey. But not bad all the same.

Onto its sequel next, Battlestations Pacific

pdbhp

EnterNow wrote: »

Just finished Battlestations Midway on the 360, inspired by a bit of Saving Private Ryan over the xmas. It's only for the naval buffs, not very 'sim' either, very arcadey. But not bad all the same.

Onto its sequel next, Battlestations Pacific

Always thought that game looked kinda good but then I'm not a big fan of strategy games especially naval strategy

Myrddin

pdbhp wrote: »

Always thought that game looked kinda good but then I'm not a big fan of strategy games especially naval strategy

Very little strategy involved, very much arcade-type action. You start out small & work your way up to fleets of ships/planes, controlling them as a fleet or as individual units. I enjoyed it, kinda easy & short though

pdbhp

EnterNow wrote: »

Very little strategy involved, very much arcade-type action. You start out small & work your way up to fleets of ships/planes, controlling them as a fleet or as individual units. I enjoyed it, kinda easy & short though

Might pick it up then as I've seen if for feck al lin the shops. The cover is nice though, thats what drew me to it in the first place

CiDeRmAn

And the most creative swearing in a game goes to...
Bulletstorm!

Just started it this morning, working my way through the mountain of games I have accrued over December.
It's fun but the language is so foul it's funny, and the lead character is a complete smeg-head!
Operation Flashpoint: Red River seems like the previous game, Dragon Rising crossed with MW3, still fun though.

Retr0gamer

Wizardry on PSN has gone from tough to crushingly difficult. The last two floors of the main dungeon are horrible due to these ****ers called Leapers. Not only do they have instant death attacks but they also have an attack that levels you down not 1 but 2 levels! that's about 3 hours of levelling lost in one fell swoop. Thankfully I have a priest that can one shot them but sometimes the ****ers get lucky so I have to save scum

happyman81

Heavy Rain - pretty good, but not as good as the critics would have you believe. I completed it in two days as well. Thankfully it was only €15.

CiDeRmAn

I find myself trying a little bit of everything right now, Prey, Red River and Super Mario 3D Land were on the menu yesterday.
Son is on the last boss in Skylanders, and it's just a long, mean grind, purely designed to make children pester their parents to buy more characters so they can have more lives to fight the bugger. Not Nice.

eddhorse

happyman81 wrote: »

Heavy Rain - pretty good, but not as good as the critics would have you believe. I completed it in two days as well. Thankfully it was only €15.

^^
Loved this game,

Just finished Uncharted 3, gonna try it on "crushing" difficulty next.

Also trying to finish Dr Robotniks Mean Bean Machine.....hard hard hard

Myrddin

After finishing Battlestations Midway, my WW2 thirst isn't quite quenched yet. Battlestations pacific, the sequel, seems utter rubbish & nowhere near as polished or involving as the first so I'll skip on.

Started IL2 Sturovik - Birds of Prey on the 360. It's good, damned good. Very polished, & it's just perfectly set in between a flight simulator & an action type arcade game. Quite an achievement on a console, & it's very well done

CiDeRmAn

EnterNow wrote: »

Started IL2 Sturovik - Birds of Prey on the 360. It's good, damned good. Very polished, & it's just perfectly set in between a flight simulator & an action type arcade game. Quite an achievement on a console, & it's very well done

I was looking at that for a while, looks pretty nice.
What are the controls like?
I always find that the lack of a flight stick for the 360 lets them down.

Have you tried the Apache sim yet, is it arcadey or like a sim, if you have?


I might have to go back to Flight Unlimited II/III and LHX Attack Chopper in the meantime!

Myrddin

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I was looking at that for a while, looks pretty nice.
What are the controls like?
I always find that the lack of a flight stick for the 360 lets them down.

Have you tried the Apache sim yet, is it arcadey or like a sim, if you have?


I might have to go back to Flight Unlimited II/III and LHX Attack Chopper in the meantime!

The controls are just a matter of getting used to really, they differ from the plane controls in BS: Midway, so playing the two sequentially like I've done, its hard to adjust to the controls on IL2. But again its just a matter of getting used to them.

All in all though, its a little bit more than a no brainer action type flight game, & on higher difficulty levels, flying alone is challenging - let alone dogfights. I think they did a great job getting something like this running on a console, & to have it controllable on a pad is no mean feat!

I havn't tried Apache, it it on the 360? My love of flight games is more or less restriced to WW2

o1s1n

Just finished the last of the special stage levels in Super Mario 3D land. Some of them were a real challange. Especially the checkpointless, time limited, shadow Mario, jump enabled flip switch bottomless pit levels!

293 out of 320 star coins collected in total. Not sure if I'll bother getting 100% of them..been playing the game far too long already.

Can finally move on to Mario Kart 7 now! Only played about 5 minutes worth of that so far.

Jack burton

I beat the first world of the special stages and havnt picked up the game since. Must finish it off soon.

I'm still playing the new Deus Ex, really one of the best games to come out of last year I think

Retr0gamer

Videogames biggest myth is that Contra on the NES is actually a hard game. The 30 man code really isn't needed at all.

I sat down to play it at 1.30 and on my first go had gotten to the stage 7 the second last level. A few more goes (mostly because the NES exclusive stages 6 and 7 are quite tough) and I eventually had it beat at 2.30 and didn't use a credit on my final run through. I actually found the game a breeze compared to most other NES titles.

It's still a classic though!

o1s1n

Jack burton wrote: »

I beat the first world of the special stages and havnt picked up the game since. Must finish it off soon.

I'm still playing the new Deus Ex, really one of the best games to come out of last year I think

The first part of that game is close to New Super Mario Bros on the DS difficulty. Consider it just a warm up for the rest of the game. You really should play through the second half.

A cool thing about the second half is you need a certain amount of star coins to get access to levels. So you end up going back and really trying your best to get them all. It really starts getting difficult when you've collected all the coins in the first half and need to start getting them from the second.

So the closer you get to the end of the game, the more hair you end up pulling out to get those more difficult coins so you can access the final levels.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Videogames biggest myth is that Contra on the NES is actually a hard game. The 30 man code really isn't needed at all.

I sat down to play it at 1.30 and on my first go had gotten to the stage 7 the second last level. A few more goes (mostly because the NES exclusive stages 6 and 7 are quite tough) and I eventually had it beat at 2.30 and didn't use a credit on my final run through. I actually found the game a breeze compared to most other NES titles.

It's still a classic though!

yeah you're right, it's not actually that hard. I had a blast of it a while ago when I still had my NES out and was suprised how easy it was to get far into it.

johnny_ultimate

Zelda addiction has set in. Skyward Sword is another Nintendo masterpiece. Absolutely huge game too.

'Reading' Nine Persons, Nine hours, Nine Doors too. Interesting and generally well written, even if it contains the most absurdly efficient blind character ever. Even Zatoichi wasn't that good!

CiDeRmAn

Playing a spot of G-Darius and Ray Storm this morning, after plugging the arrangement into the Sony CRT.
Look great and plays even better.
I suck at G-Darius though!
I have the original and version 2 here, anyone care to let me know the difference?

Also, played a spot of Halo Anniversary and very good it remains.
In retrospect on Reach has come close to the feel of the original game.
I look forward to finishing it all over again!

o1s1n

That post was full of so much win with the G-NET..

Then you just had to mention Halo

Retr0gamer

Don't worry, he just hasn't reached the Flood levels yet where he'll no doubt turn the game off and never come back to it. Either that or he'llget confused by the circular level design.

CiDeRmAn

No, I will just love the Flood levels all the more.


The Flood, the Jar Jar Binks of the Halo universe (and I love them!)

Myrddin

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Videogames biggest myth is that Contra on the NES is actually a hard game. The 30 man code really isn't needed at all.

I sat down to play it at 1.30 and on my first go had gotten to the stage 7 the second last level. A few more goes (mostly because the NES exclusive stages 6 and 7 are quite tough) and I eventually had it beat at 2.30 and didn't use a credit on my final run through. I actually found the game a breeze compared to most other NES titles.

It's still a classic though!

Retr0gamer

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

The Flood, the Jar Jar Binks of the Halo universe (and I love them!)

You heard it here people. Loves Jar Jar Binks. Hates Streets of Rage.

CiDeRmAn

Hmm, allow me to correct myself and say...

I despise Jar Jar Binks, dislike the first prequel in the main, but enjoyed the pod racing, space battles and sabre fights, pretty much everything but the script and 80% of the acting was fun....

I like the Flood, that is the use of the Flood as a game changer in the game, the close quarters shotgun action etc, happening upon a battle between Covenant and Flood, nipping in later and taking out the stragglers...
I don't like them in a sense of inviting them around for a coffee, perhaps think of a family together....