What are you playing?

[chronovore]

Yeah, that makes them show up on the mini-map, but after you find them they disappear.  So the only way to find ones you are missing is to download a big map with all the locations and go one by one until you see the correct one show on your mini-map.

You can differentiate the ones you've found vs. not-found by grey icons or white icons.

[Bebpo]

I beat Gemini Rue and only had to look at a walkthrough twice. 

Great game

I need to finish this.  I liked the detective stuff, but the trapped in a space prison part was really repetitive.

[The Sceneman]

The spoken word intro to Robo Aleste is incredible.... I cant find it online anywhere though

Starts at 0:48 in this video:

Man I miss old Sega, even though new Sega makes awesome games sometimes.

Robo Aleste is not a Sega game

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Just got Spec Ops The Line off GMG for 6 bucks. Heard it's a super generic shooter with an awesome story, which sounds juuuuust right to me right now.

[chronovore]

Playing the original Darksiders, which I started in 2010 and set aside. Back then, I was trying Apocalyptic difficulty; now I know I would never have finished the game, out of frustration. I'm hanging up my penis for this one, and taking it on Easy.

I had what counts as a VERY long session today, 4.5 hours... and I'm honestly finding it a little same-y now. The combat is pretty darned easy on, er, Easy. However, the traversal problems don't seem to have a lot of variation.

Anyway, I'll finish it, and hopefully have some gumption to start on Darksiders II before THQ evaporates.

[Fifstar]

I just tried the demo of Rayman Origins and franky I'm kinda underwhelmed. Love the soundtrack and the graphiics are  (even though something about them doesn't feel quite right) but gameplay wise it seems kinda bland.

[archnemesis]

I played through the Vita version and it's alright. They actually managed to implement a handful of nice touchscreen functions without making them feel tacked on or gimmicky.

[Great Rumbler]

Test Drive Unlimited 2 is a game about driving all over the Italian island of Ibiza, an island famous for its pulsing nightlife and abundance of electronic music, and the soundtrack is somehow NOT packed with Italo-Disco and its descendants? This should have been an easy homerun, Eden Games. Instead you get two limp-wristed radio stations that are a random grab bag of a few cool songs and a boat-load of junk, and they constantly bridge the gap between songs with "hilarious" fake commercials. The worst part is that TDU2 doesn't even allow custom soundtracks, even though the first game did.

Finding an Italo Disco playlist on Youtube and running it in the background made the game 10x better.

[tiesto]

Test Drive Unlimited 2 is a game about driving all over the Italian island of Ibiza, an island famous for its pulsing nightlife and abundance of electronic music, and the soundtrack is somehow NOT packed with Italo-Disco and its descendants? This should have been an easy homerun, Eden Games. Instead you get two limp-wristed radio stations that are a random grab bag of a few cool songs and a boat-load of junk, and they constantly bridge the gap between songs with "hilarious" fake commercials. The worst part is that TDU2 doesn't even allow custom soundtracks, even though the first game did.

Finding an Italo Disco playlist on Youtube and running it in the background made the game 10x better.

Ibiza is Spanish not Italian

Ibiza has a long history of electronic music, from italodisco (and its descendants, balearic/nu-disco, which btw is the type of music I spin a lot), to early acid house, to melodic progressive trance (Chicane and Solar Stone), nowadays its known for every single type of genre of EDM and every single well-known DJ makes residence there over the summer.

[Great Rumbler]

Don't make the mistake of thinking that I take European geography seriously.

Listening to lots of Italo Disco while I play does improve the game greatly, however, though I guess you can say the same for just about any game.

[The Sceneman]

Just got Spec Ops The Line off GMG for 6 bucks. Heard it's a super generic shooter with an awesome story, which sounds juuuuust right to me right now.

grrrrreat game. Super typical (fun) third person cover shooter with really good art and set-piece direction, and the story is incredible. It uses the tried and true Heart of Darkness/Aguirre/Apocalypse Now narrative structure

[Don Flamenco]

so if you preorder MGS Revengeance from gamestop, you get a Cyborg Ninja skin for Raiden.  and if you preorder Anarchy Reigns anywhere, you get Bayonetta. 

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Just got Spec Ops The Line off GMG for 6 bucks. Heard it's a super generic shooter with an awesome story, which sounds juuuuust right to me right now.

grrrrreat game. Super typical (fun) third person cover shooter with really good art and set-piece direction, and the story is incredible. It uses the tried and true Heart of Darkness/Aguirre/Apocalypse Now narrative structure

Yep, really digging it. Just played a few hours and it's mint. It's a standard fare (but well made) TPS with some bangin' atmosphere. Totally worth 6 bucks. No one is playing MP, but I'm assuming I'm not missing much on that front.

[demi]

I got it from gamefly too on trey nasty. I will have to put it in.

[cool breeze]

so if you preorder MGS Revengeance from gamestop, you get a Cyborg Ninja skin for Raiden.  and if you preorder Anarchy Reigns anywhere, you get Bayonetta.

Anarchy Reigns is Gamestop only in the states too 

This preorder stuff is annoying when it's for games I want.  These are literally the only two games I had preordered on Amazon and was willing to pay full price for.

[The Sceneman]

I got it from gamefly too on trey nasty. I will have to put it in.

fairly easy 1000/1000 too. Requires 2 plays as you need to unlock "FUBAR" difficulty and beat that but it's pretty manageable. No MP cheevs thankfully

[Don Flamenco]

so if you preorder MGS Revengeance from gamestop, you get a Cyborg Ninja skin for Raiden.  and if you preorder Anarchy Reigns anywhere, you get Bayonetta.

Anarchy Reigns is Gamestop only in the states too 

This preorder stuff is annoying when it's for games I want.  These are literally the only two games I had preordered on Amazon and was willing to pay full price for.

I'll be pissed if there are separate preorder skins at each store for Revengeance.   On the plus side, none of them are gonna beat the Cyborg Ninja skin.

[Takuan]

Just got Spec Ops The Line off GMG for 6 bucks. Heard it's a super generic shooter with an awesome story, which sounds juuuuust right to me right now.

Fuck, was this a one day thing? I totally would've gotten it for $6. It's showing as $30 now.

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Yeah it was 75% off. With the 20% coupon stacked on top it was down to 6 bucks.

[Takuan]

Yeah it was 75% off. With the 20% coupon stacked on top it was down to 6 bucks.

Motherfucker. Well, it'll definitely go on sale again sometime during the holidays. Not sure if it'll be as cheap, though.

[iconoclast]

I can still do better since I was little sloppy in places, but I'm starting to feel pretty satisfied with this.

Futari is the best game ever. (Note that I didn't specify video game or shooting game - it's simply the best game.)

[Raban]

yo icono, which version do you prefer? I assume you're playing on 360, what do you think of Black Label?

[Great Rumbler]

Started playing KOTOR 2 today, because I like KOTOR and I like Obsidian. This game has both those things, fortunately. I'd say that just from the first 4 hours I like it more than the first game, it just feels like it's a bit more varied in its gameplay and I like the characters and story more so far.

[iconoclast]

yo icono, which version do you prefer? I assume you're playing on 360, what do you think of Black Label?

Depends on the mode

1.5 Original vs. BL Original - I prefer 1.5 at the moment, but I intend to give BL another shot pretty soon.
1.5 Maniac vs. BL Maniac - 1.5 is easily my favorite. Having to create a bunch of mini-chains throughout each stage for max gems is a lot more satisfying than BL, where gaining meter is as simple as holding/tapping C. The bosses in BL aren't nearly as good either.
1.5 Ultra - Haven't started playing it yet.
God Mode - Perfection. The difficulty is expertly tuned (the entire game is beatable without bombing or dying if you have the skills) and the scoring system has a ton of depth. Best game ever.

So basically, both 1.5 and BL are awesome in their own way.

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Okay, Spec Ops is phenomenal. Holy shit.

[Raban]

yo icono, which version do you prefer? I assume you're playing on 360, what do you think of Black Label?

Depends on the mode

1.5 Original vs. BL Original - I prefer 1.5 at the moment, but I intend to give BL another shot pretty soon.
1.5 Maniac vs. BL Maniac - 1.5 is easily my favorite. Having to create a bunch of mini-chains throughout each stage for max gems is a lot more satisfying than BL, where gaining meter is as simple as holding/tapping C. The bosses in BL aren't nearly as good either.
1.5 Ultra - Haven't started playing it yet.
God Mode - Perfection. The difficulty is expertly tuned (the entire game is beatable without bombing or dying if you have the skills) and the scoring system has a ton of depth. Best game ever.

So basically, both 1.5 and BL are awesome in their own way.

Thanks! I think I'll just stick to 1.5 and get BL down the road.

EDIT: I just clicked that link... I'm only just getting used to Hell mode! That looks like pure insanity.

[demi]

Okay, Spec Ops is phenomenal. Holy shit.

I'm installing it right now. I'll shit on your chest if you are wrong.

[Bebpo]

I started playing Alan Wake & AC3 last night.

Alan Wake is pretty enjoyable.  The visuals are GREAT and it plays really smoothly.  I like the twilight zone angle of the whole thing and it has that B-movie feel which makes up for the fact it's not particularly scary but more popcorn fun.

BUT

fuck not letting you get 100% collectables unless you are on the highest difficulty!!!  As an OCD collector in games who also likes to enjoy them on NORMAL difficulty and not deal with frustrations of hard or higher difficulty in most games (especially games involving shooting guns), this sucks and is really frustrating.  In the first chapter I found all the pages except the stupid ones only available on Nightmare difficulty.  Since I have no interest in ever play the game twice and since I don't want my first run through to be annoying when I'm just here for the story, I will have to live with missing pages every chapter even if I search around and find all the other ones.  Absolutely moronic design decision.  Makes me want to do a yoga noogie on the guy who thought of that's noggin.

[Raban]

Sorcery in Dark Souls is 100% grade A comedy. Ornstein went down in three hits, and I'm only level 30.

[naff]

Sorcery in Dark Souls is 100% grade A comedy. Ornstein went down in three hits, and I'm only level 30.

Woah cray. I collected heaps of sorceries but used very few, I'm playing a Monk type at the moment, though my goal is to use it mainly for buffing melee with sunlight/darkmoon blade

[The Sceneman]

Okay, Spec Ops is phenomenal. Holy shit.

sweet, what part in particular made you say this?

[Raban]

Sorcery in Dark Souls is 100% grade A comedy. Ornstein went down in three hits, and I'm only level 30.

Woah cray. I collected heaps of sorceries but used very few, I'm playing a Monk type at the moment, though my goal is to use it mainly for buffing melee with sunlight/darkmoon blade

Just make sure you buff your sorcery damage. The Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring (sold by Rickert in Firelink) should be enough. For that extra oomph you can nab Dusk's crown, but it's a bit of a bother to get.

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Okay, Spec Ops is phenomenal. Holy shit.

sweet, what part in particular made you say this?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

... and then everything since that. Haven't finished yet.

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Just finished. Sheeeeeit. How did no one play this?

[Don Flamenco]

my lack of belief in a video game's power to deliver a narrative that doesn't feel cheap somehow

[The Sceneman]

Just finished. Sheeeeeit. How did no one play this?

There was a thread... Our Stoney and Green Man clocked the game and gave appropriate feedback. Easy to miss a thread but.

But yeah Spec Ops: The Line is still my retail GOTY

Spelunky XBLA is GOTY also FTL is PC GOTY

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Spelunky is gaming priority #1 when I get home in three months.

[Timber]

Played all the Tales of Monkey Island. Not sure why. NOT CANON 

[Big Barry Jazz]

Motherfucker. Well, it'll definitely go on sale again sometime during the holidays. Not sure if it'll be as cheap, though.

Gamefly have just put it on sale for £5 (sorry, don't know what they're charging in $) and I think you can get an extra 20% off with NOV20OFF.

The gameplay is servicable, although there are a few evil difficulty spikes. Probably the very definition of a rental as it doesn't take long to finish and you probably won't want to play through more than a couple of times, but I think everyone should give it a try as the story is quite the step-up from most the crap we usually get.

[Sho Nuff]

Finishing assassins creed III, holy fuck this game has horrible player messaging. I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing half the time and I'm failing missions 5 times as much as I did in any previous AC game. This game is a fucking mess.

[Eric P]

girlfriend bought a bunch of rap albums so i'm playing yakuza 4 in the living room

[Don Flamenco]

Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus (actually, it's minus) 

i was in the middle of a bunch of games that I haven't beaten 5 million times before.  pop in NGS+ and 5 hours gone like that.  you guys have no idea how badly hooked to this game I am...and I've owned every version since the first one came out on Xbox  :'(

[Sho Nuff]

Oh I forgot to mention that the naval battles in AC3 are like the coolest thing I've ever seen in a video game

[tiesto]

Man, Last Story is already getting to be such a slog. The boss battles in particular, every one of them seems to be very gimmicky and the too-close-camera plus distinguished mentally-challenged AI makes them even more painful.

[Positive Touch]

Finishing assassins creed III, holy fuck this game has horrible player messaging. I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing half the time and I'm failing missions 5 times as much as I did in any previous AC game. This game is a fucking mess.

thought you guys were exaggerating, but then during the FIRST FIGHT its like "press B to parry" and i hit B and parry but the counter wont go up. i hit B again, and again, and again, and then start following it up with other buttons to see if they make me attack or something (they dont), so i just keep parrying. eventually the game counts 3 parries after doing about 30 and i'm able to move on. not a good start

[Bebpo]

That's what happens when your game is made in French! 

[tiesto]

I totally blanked out on Mega Man 6 and couldn't remember if I ever beat it or not, so I went ahead and finished it. Started off kinda tough but once you got the Jetpack the game became pretty cake. It was also VERY generous in terms of drops, and the bosses were pretty easy too. Pretty unmemorable, apart from a few nifty stages (Plant Man ironically is the toughest).

[Bebpo]

I finished Episode 2 "The Taken" in Alan Wake tonight and wow did the game take a nosedive and go from "this is a neat game" to "ugh, I'm already sick of it and ready for it to be over".

1.  Too much combat, combat is terrible.  Repetitive enemies, enemies move faster than you can run (stupid for a survival horror), enemies respawn when you leave the light so you pretty much have to kill them most of the time.  Die super fast in a few hits. 

2.  Everywhere looks the same.  Forest trail, forest trail, forest trail, bridges, cabins.  Not a lot of variety so far.  Looks gorgeous but is already getting stale.

3.  Not scary.  Enemies are truckers with black shadow.  Just annoying.

4.  Writing is bad and not in a cheesy B-movie way like it seemed when it started.  Just bad and boring.  And the story.  Oh wow, it was good when it was Twin Peaks-ish at the first chapter but now there's this kidnapping plot and the guy is like YOU NEED TO WRITE THE BOOK and it's pretty boring and not very thrilling.

5.  Lots of bad level design so far.  It's very linear, narrow, scripted and some of the fights suck.  Where are the dungeons like RE/SH?


Ehhhh, I think I might just set it to easy and speed run chapter 3 to see if it picks up.  If it keeps going downhill at that point, with all the episodes in the main game, the 2 DLC chapters and the Expansion Game...seems like a lot of game to play through if I'm not digging it, so I'll probably bail after episode 3.

[Beezy]

Yes, it's possible to do without a FAQ. I did it when I was about 11-12. Got every mask in the game and fought the boss as Oni Link. Haven't played the game since then so I can't help you, but it's easily my favorite 3D Zelda to this day.

[Beezy]

Well I had no responsibilities and it was the only game that I was playing at the time, so don't feel bad.

[Timber]

- after I finished the dungeon etc. I moved back in time because I had like 10 minutes before Game Over screen. I then tried to re-enter the dungeon to catch the Stray Fairies and I... cannot? I have to do the stupid Deku Palace --> Monkey Cage thing again? I know the Song that opens Woodlands but it does not work now? Is it scripted so that the Deku King has to be torturing the Monkey before I can re-enter the Dungeon?
- same with Deku Shrine: I cannot re-enter untill I do the Woodlands dungeon AGAIN and beat the Boss AGAIN? It makes no sense...

You really should be able to return to a dungeon without doing any of the preceding questing. Dunno what's going wrong here.

[iconoclast]

Yeah Alan Wake is not so great. The DLC episodes are a little more interesting than most of the main game tho, so if you finish it you should check them out at least.

I thought it was funny how Alan Wake places so much emphasis on its story and characters, but it got outclassed by a D-tier budget game a few months earlier (Deadly Premonition).

[cool breeze]

yeah, I'm not a fan of the main game, but the DLCs + American Nightmare I really liked.  The action and story (and how it affects the action) are much better realized.

[Positive Touch]

i loved the max payne games, but i was so bored with alan wake by the time i finished that i couldnt even bring myself to play the dlc. sooo repetitive.

as for majora's mask, yeah everything resets and iirc you have to do SOME stuff to go searching through that area again, but i thought there were songs or something that let you warp to each dungeon entrance on replays

[Himu]

welcome to the best zelda, borys.

[Himu]

Okay, to ease your pain, here's some MM pointers.

1. Play the song of slow time. It slows time down to a crawl. It is the opposite of the song of double time, which helps you skip a day.

Songs to know:

Song of Time

 

Inverted Song of Time - this slows down time.



Song of Double Time - this allows you to advance time.



When starting on day one, always play the song of inverted time immediately. It will slow it to a crawl, and you will have a shit load of time to do what you want.

See them in action here:



2. Replenshing rupees, bombs;etc.

Before going back in time, if you have a lot of rupees, go to the bank in Clock Town. Deposit your money, then play the song of time. More than that, when you get the Goron mask, you will be able to replenish rupees, bombs, and more easily by going out into Termina field and doing this.



0:00 - 0:12

3. When you unlock a dungeon, just save and go back to day one. You will have the ability to go back since you'll still have those skills. Then play song of inverted and quick travel to the dungeon of your choosing. Each dungeon I think has a mid-boss or something that also allows unlocks a quick thing that allows you to skip to the mid point of the dungeon. So if you're on day three in the middle of a dungeon, save and quit and utilize this. You'll be able to start at the halfway point. Fantastic dungeon design. Of course, with song of inverted, you usually have enough time to clear the entire dungeon before getting a game over. You have that much time on your clock to do it.

The reason why the puzzles in the first dungeon were amazing is because a very simple thing that Majora's Mask does that no other Zelda does: pre-dungeon puzzles. Usually, in Zelda, you gain the item you need IN the dungeon. Then the dungeon precedes to teach you how to use that item. In Majora's Mask, the dungeons are built are around the use of your three main masks along with default Link, and they all force you to MASTER the mask before you even step inside the dungeon. So by the time you get inside the dungeon, the game goes to eleven. Why? Because you've already mastered the basics, time to go for the real game.

And this is why Majora's Mask is the best Zelda. It doesn't coddle, it embraces adventure, and it doesn't treat the player like a dirt person. Best Zelda.

[Himu]

Oh, and don't just do the dungeons. Majora's Mask has only four dungeons, it is a game mostly about side questing. Kind of like say, Skyrim. Fill your bomber book in between dungeons. Get Epona immediately.

[Beezy]

And this is why Majora's Mask is the best Zelda. It doesn't coddle, it embraces adventure, and it doesn't treat the player like a dirt person. Best Zelda.

.

[Joe Molotov]

I remember being blown away by Majora's Mask at the time, just the fact that it had this big town with all these NPCs with their own routines. Seemed pretty impressive at the time.

[demi]

Spec Ops is fucking garbage. Controls for shit, AI is shit, graphics are shit

I need to stop playing these shitty fucking shooters. Go to a relaxing RPG.