What are you playing?

[chronovore]

just got 250/250 in Peggle I never want to play that game ever again  :'(

This is the trouble I have with Achievements. You loved that game, but you ground and ground to get the full score, and now it is abhorrent to you.

[Eel O'Brian]

oblivion.  there is a lot to do in this game and i feel like i'm missing out.

also, some really powerful random encounters happened near me where all of the spawned npcs killed each other, so i have some really, really, really powerful equipment for early on in the game.  feels a little cheap on my part, but i don't really want to give them up because it makes the combat aspect of the game so much more bearable if i just clobber the hell out of everything i come across. 

yeah, you really appreciate the tweaks they made to fallout 3 combat when you go back and play oblivion

[cool breeze]

After continuing my replay of Deus Ex, I gave Invisible War another shot hoping to finish it this time.  After about two hours I can see that won't happen.

How did Deus Ex hold up?

It's still amazing.  I mean, there are problems that are easy to ignore like wonky collision and AI, but I think those are more general issues with FPS games at the time; HL1 has similar issues.

Despite being a newer game, Invisible War feels more dated than the first game in a lot of ways.

[Junpei the Tracer!]

I started up Magna Carta 2 earlier as well. It's actually a pretty good game so far, but I hope I get a mount at some point. Running back and forth through these big MMO-esque maps can get annoying. I also bought the DLC, and the weapons it gives you are hilariously broken. They are literally 10x stronger than the weapons I'm currently using, so I'm not going to equip them until I level up a whole lot. Blowing through the game 1-shotting everything would be pretty boring.

This should be a quick 1000/1000 with the DLC.

[archie4208]

After continuing my replay of Deus Ex, I gave Invisible War another shot hoping to finish it this time.  After about two hours I can see that won't happen.

How did Deus Ex hold up?

It's still amazing.  I mean, there are problems that are easy to ignore like wonky collision and AI, but I think those are more general issues with FPS games at the time; HL1 has similar issues.

Despite being a newer game, Invisible War feels more dated than the first game in a lot of ways.

I just started downloading it again off Steam.  Looks like I'll be playing that after I beat Mask of the Betrayer!

[cool breeze]

if you do play it on a modern machine, use this renderer: http://tgq.nl/kentie.net/?article=d3d10drv

makes the game run right on modern machines and all that

[Smooth Groove]

Are there mod packs for Deux Ex like the ones for System Shock 2?

[Smooth Groove]

I'm finally having some appreciation for portable gaming, specifically the PSP.  Since the score changes so few times during a soccer match, I can play Peace Walker while watching the World Cup.  So far, I think it deserves to be the first PSP game I've bought in two years.  The stealth is still janky but Kojima has made enough concessions in the AI so that it doesn't matter as much. 

ehhh, just depends what you are into.  There's some quality stuff there if you're into jrpgs/srpgs.  In all other categories, yeah the console destroy the handhelds. 

I've been disappointed with portable jrpgs because their scopes are so much smaller.  When I think of jrpgs, epic comes to mind but the couple of portable of jrpgs (non-remakes) that I've tried are so small in scale.  Some of the NDS ones don't even have overworlds to more around in.  WTF 

I'm hoping srpgs will fare better on the portables.  What's a good one to try?  I've never really played a Japanese srpg because they seem to take forever before the gameplay and story get exciting. 

[Bebpo]

SRPGs hmmm.
If you really want to try a J-SRPG, portables probably aren't the best place to start.

I mean if I could only recommend one SRPG ever, it'd be Tactics Ogre - Let Us Cling Together by Matsuno.  It's the precursor to Final Fantasy Tactics but the story is much more realistic/gritty/dark.  The writing is excellent and the gameplay is real good.   I played the PS1 version on an emu I think, which helped some of the janky problems of the PS1 port (there's SNES, Saturn, PS1 versions).

And then there's FFT which is still a great game.

The Fire Emblem series is also good, although it's a very different kind of srpg.  But it's more mainstreamed and easy to enjoy.

Front Mission games are pretty badass.  They mix srpg battles with Mechwarrior/Armored Core part tweaking and mech building. 

The N1 games are not for everyone.  They're more min-maxing loot games than rack your brain srpg challange maps.


On portables I hear Wild Arms XF is good and Valkyrie Profile DS.  Devil Survivor is a mish-mash of srpg x rpg battles (which is what Sakaguchi's ASH for DS was) and is supposed to be top notch.  The Metal Gear Ac!d games are a mix of srpg & magic the gathering and are great.  The Sting games like Yggdra & Riveria & Knights of the Knightmare are supposed to be good as well.

[Beezy]

I've been disappointed with portable jrpgs because their scopes are so much smaller.  When I think of jrpgs, epic comes to mind but the couple of portable of jrpgs (non-remakes) that I've tried are so small in scale.  Some of the NDS ones don't even have overworlds to more around in.  WTF 

Hmm, I think this is the problem that I have with handheld jrpgs also. The only ones that I like besides srpgs are the good dungeon crawlers like SMT: Strange Journey and the Etrian Odyssey games.

[iconoclast]

Devil Survivor is the best SRPG and best RPG in general on the DS.

Devil Survivor

[The Sceneman]

just got 250/250 in Peggle I never want to play that game ever again  :'(

This is the trouble I have with Achievements. You loved that game, but you ground and ground to get the full score, and now it is abhorrent to you.

I dunno, I still had a lot of fun even towards the end, Peggle is a great game in moderation, its just playing it for 3 hours straight is just straight up wasting time when theres plenty of other games I could be playing.

Well Im pretty proud of my 250/250, its pretty rare as Peggle is one of the harder XBLA games to complete.

[Bildi]

Finished Metro 2033.  I initially thought I'd go for a lot of achievements but I've had my fill of the game and have too many unfinished/unstarted games on the shelf.

Onto Fable 2 to finish the remaining quests.

[Mr. Gundam]

Gonna wrap up No More Heroes (PS3) tomorrow and then move on to Ryu ga Gotoku 4.

[The Sceneman]

Anyone know if the 360/PS3 version of NMH is getting an english release?

[Bebpo]

doubtful

[The Sceneman]

NMH would sell very well on 360 as a budget release IMO.

[demi]

I dont think it would

[archie4208]

Didn't NMH sell like 50k on the Wii in America?

[The Sceneman]

of course it sold like shit on the Wii, everything does except for Wii Fit and Mario games

On 360 you get 600k copies of distinguished mentally-challenged fellow bro games like Army of Two sold in a month, much better home for that type of thing.

But demi is probably right, its just too jappy to really sell well anywhere on any console. Its unfortunate, but a lot of things are, you just gotta 

[demi]

I'd buy it at a budget price ($30 at max... but Deadly Premonition set the standard, $20 or dont bother) but I like NMH and would love to 1000 that

[Mr. Gundam]

doubtful

I imported it, so I'm guessing it will end up here now. It will definitely bomb if it does, though.

[The Sceneman]

Yeah it'll tank on PS3 for sure

[archie4208]

Mask of the Betrayer was awesome.  Obsidian are the kings of RPG storytelling.

[Smooth Groove]

SRPGs hmmm.
If you really want to try a J-SRPG, portables probably aren't the best place to start.

I mean if I could only recommend one SRPG ever, it'd be Tactics Ogre - Let Us Cling Together by Matsuno.  It's the precursor to Final Fantasy Tactics but the story is much more realistic/gritty/dark.  The writing is excellent and the gameplay is real good.   I played the PS1 version on an emu I think, which helped some of the janky problems of the PS1 port (there's SNES, Saturn, PS1 versions).

And then there's FFT which is still a great game.

The Fire Emblem series is also good, although it's a very different kind of srpg.  But it's more mainstreamed and easy to enjoy.

Front Mission games are pretty badass.  They mix srpg battles with Mechwarrior/Armored Core part tweaking and mech building. 

The N1 games are not for everyone.  They're more min-maxing loot games than rack your brain srpg challange maps.


On portables I hear Wild Arms XF is good and Valkyrie Profile DS.  Devil Survivor is a mish-mash of srpg x rpg battles (which is what Sakaguchi's ASH for DS was) and is supposed to be top notch.  The Metal Gear Ac!d games are a mix of srpg & magic the gathering and are great.  The Sting games like Yggdra & Riveria & Knights of the Knightmare are supposed to be good as well.

So the PS1 version of Tactics Ogre is the best?  Is there a way to run PS1 games on the PSP at higher framerates? 

Also, which Disgaea for the PSP would you recommend?  I want to try something that doesn't take too long to get going.  One problem that I have with J-srpgs is that the tutorials seem to take forever.   

I've been disappointed with portable jrpgs because their scopes are so much smaller.  When I think of jrpgs, epic comes to mind but the couple of portable of jrpgs (non-remakes) that I've tried are so small in scale.  Some of the NDS ones don't even have overworlds to more around in.  WTF 

Hmm, I think this is the problem that I have with handheld jrpgs also. The only ones that I like besides srpgs are the good dungeon crawlers like SMT: Strange Journey and the Etrian Odyssey games.

Maybe 3DS will fare better with a much bigger market share than the PSP?  It seems like Japanese developers were willing to work on the DS but the hardware limitations were too much to make stuff that approximate PS2 jrpgs. 

[The Sceneman]

get Yggdra Union PSP, its hot

[Bebpo]

Disgaea 1.  2 has better gameplay but the characters are mostly boring as is the plot.  But I dunnnnno about playing Disgaea to get into srpgs.  The thing is Disgaea is a loot game.  There's like 8000 piece of equipment and then dozens of ways to improve your stats and the stats of your attacks.  Because it would be impossible to design actual challenging battles around this (because the designers have no idea what the players stats/equip/spells will be) the maps are basically "here are dudes at this lvl.  Be stronger and win".  The satisfaction is in the loot game and making ever more powerful characters to get ever bigger numbers on attack hits.  It's very different from a typical srpg.

Also in terms of "something that gets going" Disgaea games are insanely complex with two dozen sub-systems to learn before you figuring out what you're doing  

I'm not sure what the big differences are between the PS1 and SNES Tactics Ogre.  I think the art might be slightly different?  PS1 version has some load times. 

from google,
SNES:


PS1


I like how when I googled it, it brought up the rpgfan review and under story rating it scored "legendary"    The story really is that good.  Matsuno is one of the best serious adult writers in Japan.  Too bad he's never gonna get to make a game again after fucking up FFXII.

[Bebpo]

and in terms of scope, it's totally the budget issue.  You can't get epic big scope rpgs without a proper budget and until very recently companies were afraid to put a full budget in portable titles.

Kingdom Hearts BBS & Peace Walker are probably the first two handheld games that feel like they have a (PS2-era) console title budget and it shows.  KH is probably the most big and epic original rpg on a handheld.  SMT SJ could have been epic but at some point they decided to focus on the gameplay and not have much of a plot or scope.  Which is probably the point where they decided it wasn't going to be SMT4 and was going to be a spinoff instead.


I think 3DS games will get there in scope, but it's gonna take a few years for the system to really prove itself before companies truly commit those kind of budgets. 
It's not even entirely about budget, as much as dev time.  Peace Walker & BBS were 2-3 year full console cycle games.  Most portable games are like 12 months dev cycle.  Xenoblade is probably the biggest scope jrpg I've ever played and that was a full 3 year development game.  3DS needs to prove itself worthy of 3 year dev cycles.

[MCD]

3DS already proved 10 years bro.

[Smooth Groove]

Is Tactics Ogre available on WII virtual console?  I'm thinking it's probably the best way to play that game.  

[Bebpo]

from joystiq

Nintendo has released the list of Virtual Console games planned for release in Japan next month, including eleven games overall. The biggest news is probably Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, which was released in North America on the PlayStation, but will be released on the VC in its original Super Famicom form. If the PlayStation release were to come out on VC, that would definitely be news. In any case, don't look for it outside Japan any time soon: as Siliconera points out, Atlus's English translation was only used for the PlayStation version, and Square Enix isn't going to license that work and recode the game to put it in. It's rather miraculous that they've deigned to dump one of their ROMs on the service as it is.

[The Sceneman]

no, the majority of games which are considered great for SNES are not, and never will be available on VC

Its all a part of Nintendos carefully thought out plan

edit: I hope you can read Japanese

[Smooth Groove]

So there never was a English version for the SNES?  Is there a fan patch?

[The Sceneman]

you could assume so but Im going to shut up now as I have no idea what Im talking about

[Great Rumbler]

So there never was a English version for the SNES?  Is there a fan patch?

Yeah, there's a fan translation out there.

[Smooth Groove]

SNES emulators on portables still suck, right?  Guess I'll have to play it all blown up and ugly on a high-def PC monitor. 

[Bebpo]

Use the PS1 version disc image and use PS1 player on PSP and there you go. 

[Smooth Groove]

But I thought you said the PS1 version was kinda buggy.  Doesn't PSP run PS1 games exactly like a PS1?

[The Sceneman]

just play the game ffs

[Bebpo]

Going by this thread on the fan translation.  The only difference between SNES and PS1 is PS1 has load times and SNES does not.
http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=42982

So probably better to play the SNES version.  Though according to that thread it's buggy with some SNES emus?

[Smooth Groove]

Ok, probably going with PS1 version then.  bugs < slow loading

[Bebpo]

Almost done with Xenoblade.  Hitting the 80 hour mark and have most of the pre-ending optional stuff done and story-wise there shouldn't be more than 5-10 hours left left.  Should clear it by 90 hours.  But then there's a LOT of post-game content (bonus dungeon, post-game questing, tons of post-game unique mobs, post-game skill trees) so might still be playing it for a few weeks.  Or maybe I won't care after the credits finally roll and will move on with gaming   Seems like people who totally ignore the sidequests clear it around 60 hours, and those who dip in them around 70-80 hours.  So it seems like 60 hour main story, 40-60 hours of optional sidequests.  Very good size game.

Started up Patchwork Heroes and it's really fun.  Totally worth $10.  The cutscenes are hilarious and the gameplay is quick and chaotic.  It feels like bomberman x sotc x puzzle game.  My only complaint is during cutscenes and when you first see a flyby of the ship you're gonna destroy there's ...screen tearing?.  Kinda odd as I've never really seen tearing in portable gaming and the game is a 2d flash-like title.

Also ended up starting Super Robot Wars K because I wanted some giant robots.  The animations are pretty decent but the spritework is really small and not too detailed (plus lack of colors).  The cast is weird in this game.  So far I've got Gai King (00s little kid version), Kotetsu shin Jeeg (00s motorteen version), Goddaner (about a 30 year old guy and his high school my waifu doing GATTAI ^^;), old-school Mazinger and some Gundam SEED.  Game also has ZOIDS Genesis, Gun x Sword, Virtua On Marz, Dangaioh and some others.  Very weird mix.

[tiesto]

Is Patchwork Heroes available on UMD or is it just a PSN download?

[Bebpo]

PSN only

[Great Rumbler]

Almost done with Xenoblade.  Hitting the 80 hour mark and have most of the pre-ending optional stuff done and story-wise there shouldn't be more than 5-10 hours left left.  Should clear it by 90 hours.  But then there's a LOT of post-game content (bonus dungeon, post-game questing, tons of post-game unique mobs, post-game skill trees) so might still be playing it for a few weeks.  Or maybe I won't care after the credits finally roll and will move on with gaming   Seems like people who totally ignore the sidequests clear it around 60 hours, and those who dip in them around 70-80 hours.  So it seems like 60 hour main story, 40-60 hours of optional sidequests.  Very good size game.

Every time you talk about how awesome Xenoblade is, I die a little inside.  :'(

[Joe Molotov]

Crimson Gem Saga, it's money.

[Purple Filth]

"Beat" MGS: Peace Walker.

Great game.

Now to deal with the epilogue and officially finish the game.

[Smooth Groove]

Peace Walker seems high quality from my playthrough of the early parts. I still wish Kojima would go back to indoor environments though.  His kinda stealth just doesn't work as well outdoors because he just can't seem to get the camera right like Splinter Cell. 

Also, PW's story is really boring for a MGS game and contains way too much unnecessary details. 

[magus]

i didn't have any problem with peace walker camera but yea the plot was dull
i guess they really didn't have anything left to squeeze out of the "I KILLED THE BOSS BECAUSE SHE WAS A TRAITOR,OR MAYBE NOT?" plotline

[Purple Filth]

Peace Walker seems high quality from my playthrough of the early parts. I still wish Kojima would go back to indoor environments though.  His kinda stealth just doesn't work as well outdoors because he just can't seem to get the camera right like Splinter Cell. 

Also, PW's story is really boring for a MGS game and contains way too much unnecessary details. 

Camera isn't bad though imo (but i don't mind moving/readjusting).

The story doesn't have much of the "cheese" like the other games but i liked it.  Big Boss is awesome  , truly a one man army (i wish i could actually beat the bosses with the m16 as shown in the cut scenes).


One thing that is kinda disappointing is that all boss battles use basically the same strategy and its only due to mother base that there is a possible alternate. 

[Smooth Groove]

It's hard to explain exactly but the camera always seems to be a bit too close-up which lets enemies slide up through the blind spots.   I think having a radar like MGS1 and 2 will alleviate many of those problems but for some reason Kojima-san seems adamant on keeping that part of the game more realistic. 

[magus]

i can see the reason,in peace walker you scout the area,tries to be carefull and when you leave your cover you always wonder if you are going to get spotted

in the original metal gear,you just have an all magical seeing radar

[Purple Filth]

well you do have a "radar" in Peace Walker, its just sound based now.

[magus]

the sound radar won't show up enemies who aren't making sounds (read hidden enemies) and if anything in peace walker you do have the classic radar but between the fact that it shows only enemies that are really close to you and the fact that you can't use it for more than 5 seconds,it's somewhat unusuable

[Purple Filth]

the sound radar won't show up enemies who aren't making sounds (read hidden enemies) and if anything in peace walker you do have the classic radar but between the fact that it shows only enemies that are really close to you and the fact that you can't use it for more than 5 seconds,it's somewhat unusuable

I thinks that's called the sonic eye or something and it normally dies since the battery drains really quickly 

[magus]

the sonic eye is the sound one
the classic radar is called solidus something

[archie4208]

I just started Risen and I can already tell this game is going to be awesome.

[cool breeze]

Invisible War is so exhausting to play.  I'm around the same part I stopped playing the last times I attempted to finish this.  Have to finish this at least once.

[Stoney Mason]

I think I'm in the mood to play Morrowind. I tried playing it when it originally came out but I was baffled and overwhelmed at the time. I think I'm ready for it now though. Any tips without getting too spoilerish?

[Great Rumbler]

I think I'm in the mood to play Morrowind. I tried playing it when it originally came out but I was baffled and overwhelmed at the time. I think I'm ready for it now though. Any tips without getting too spoilerish?

Get some mods from the Elder Scrolls Nexus.