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Game Progress Topic Theta
CLOUDBOND007 No new game progress, although I probably will play some more Mario tonight. I do think it's very good, my favorite of the 3D Marios at this point (around 20 stars collected). It plays more like one of the 2D games than I really thought possible. You're sacrificing some of the fun of exploration that was present in Mario 64 and Sunshine (once you pick a star from the level select, you're pretty much on a set path to that star), but I think it's worth it to see the gameplay go back to it's roots somewhat. Watching DBZ on DVD has been a mixed experience. Everything from the beginning of the show up to about 25% of the combined Namek+Frieza sagas was recently redubbed. The dub sounded good and was pretty accurate when I compared it to the subtitles. Very little censorship, next dimension stuff, heck, etc. But then at that 25% point, it switched to dubbing that was done years ago when the voice actors were still in the early stages of learning those characters, and it was very awkward. The dialogue also varies much more from the supposedly accurate subtitles, sometimes wildly. It's weird having the dialogue be censored while the animation is not, so there's this sometimes unnaturally tame dialogue combined with visuals featuring copious amounts of blood and gore.
TaroSH I thought Chatting Parodius would be more up my alley. Man, I hope there's a way to turn that yakking old man off. Well, it's easier to keep track of, but it's a little dull, too. I played as the flying kitty!
da dick anyways, completed the light path. my number of kills for each hero seems to be much much lower than the indie path. i guess it's mostly 'cause i had only 6 heroes to use for half of the indie game. strangely i didn't see any mention about the war being called "art of swords war" in the light ending. maybe that was just a little honorific of sorts for completing the more difficult paths. that is, overall more difficult. the last scenario for the light path(well, the 2nd of the 3 ways the light path could end,chose to defeat boser 1st, then sonya, then kaiser) was more difficult than the imperial path(yeah, 2nd of the 4 ways the imperial game could end). the kaiser is tougher to kill than calais/jessica, but that's not why it's harder. it's the layout of the final scenario in the light path. it forces me to kill almost everything before i could reach the kaiser's throne. in the imperial one, i was split into 2 groups, but the way to calais was wide open. that and the game got too damn easy once i've obtained both the langrisser and alhazard. for the indie path, i also got to use both swords but there was no one else but elwin who could use it. leon could also use the langrisser in the imperial path, so i would equip the alhazard on elwin. the cutscene was prettier but a little shorter than the imperial and indie ending. showed the langrisser being commanded by the shrine maidens to seal away the alhazard and *poop* both swords disappeared. then some talk about working for peace, as the absence of the empire would make the various countries go to war again. and mario ,for some reason, thinks the best way to make peace is to go on an aimless roadtrip. what a bum. the epilogue said that he would eventually win some reward for settling some dispute between 3 states, visit liana's orphanage, buy it off her, and grab her along for another roadtrip. i guess that's suppose to be a happy ending for him. well, before that epilogue, there's a scene of calais chatting with the goddess o light. some stuff about the langrisser and alhazard disappearing from the world forever, along with the gods, and calais the avatar of light will just hang around in the celestial realm to observe and no longer interfere(sp). hmmm... sounds similar to the god-killing indie path ending except no mention of furry blood-thirsty monsters living in peace and harmony with hummies. the epilogue.right. hein still got kidnapped by cho anikis. wtf?!!? i wonder if it has anything to do with his high number of kills? liana , as i've said, starts an orphanage, and eventually ran off somewhere with mario. her twin, lana, dies from a horrible disease while trying to find a cure for it. scott goes off somewhere for hardcore training after getting his ass kicked. keith retires but got killed by some monster. stupid cherie ran away from home and was rumoured to have been killed by a dragon after challenging it. lester became a flithy drunk, but later became flithy rich after defeating a sea monster, and used the money to finance his bucaneering(sp?) ways. 5 bad(including possible aniki buttsex) endings out of 8? what the hell? the bloody-minded indie ending doesn't sound so bad compared to this. maybe it does have something to do with the score/ number of kills for each character ... nope. after replaying the last indie scenario, i beat it without getting sonya killed(meaning zero defeats for sonya), and noticed that her epilogue was slightly more positive as it says that she became welcome in the village she previously tried to wreck, instead of the worse ending which mentions that she still has trouble being accepted by monsters as she's a half-human. so to get a good ending for every character, i have make sure they're never defeated in any scenario.that's much harder to do compared to warsong. i guess rohga will always have a sad ending in the imperial path if sonya isn't talked out of the darkside. elwin/mario will always have at least a fairly good ending since it's game over if he's ever defeated in battle. don't remember if i ever got liana(light path) killed. i guess not, since her defence was pretty good as a sage. the heck. i don't like most of the characters enough to want good endings for them.near impossible to get good endings for esto and osto in the indie path, as there's scenario where they'll turn against me, until i defeat boser. for my game, i beat them both before going for boser, as he's pretty tough to beat when he holding the alhazard, sitting on a throne(40% defence bonus), and guarded by arch-demons. hein's pretty hard to keep alive with his low defence. i only got sonya killed once for the last scenario as i usually kept her at the back, but got impatient. replayed the imperial ending again and found out that the 2 treasure chests contain a runestone and a flame lance. for the indie ending, there's a dragonslayer(+7 attack) sword under some statue.not useful at all without using the level skipping cheat. maybe i'll check it out just to see the different endings? hm... should move on to romancing saga, or maybe back to irritating BOF2 or earthbound... but i really like playing as a hero , carrying a bigass phallic sword, commanding a variety of troops, and showing off my in-game manliness... right. oh, and noticed that the light ending(in boser's castle) allowed me to buy more dragon armour for about 2000GP each... i rant too much.
Crawl and 1OOO One of the more unexpected gifts FO got for me for Christmas was the Beavis and Butt-head set. I'm a good ways into it. It's not the full series -- it's about 2/3 of it. Mike Judge said that 1/3 of the series was good, 1/3 mediocre, and 1/3 terrible, and he left the terrible third off. I don't know if I agree with his judgments. I thought the one where they found a mouse in a bottle and the one where Beavis wore roadkill on his head as "fur" were funny, but they're not on the set. Anyway, it's kind of mixed. It can be funny, and even kind of addictive (some episodes are only about 5 minutes long, so it's easy to watch a lot in a row), but it can get really repetitive, too. There's only so much "huh, huh, huh" and "That was cool" that you can take. I think the series got better when there were more characters for them to interact with, and when the joke was more about making fun of Beavis and Butt-head than when it was glamorizing them. Or when they do a "You said ..." joke and it's clever or unexpected ("We need this television to entertain us." "You said anus") than just "You said hard". I asked FO if she knew anyone like Beavis and Butt-head in school. She was like, "Um, I don't know, uh, maybe...?" My answer is a little more decisive. From about 6th grade on, at least about half the kids in my classes were basically Beavis and Butt-head.
Flying Omelette Gee, it seems like it took awhile for the concept to get its footing. I have no idea what the point of that special was. For one thing, it's "hosted" by a completely extraneous character who never made it into the series. He's a muppet like the one in the pitch reel, only with sunglasses named "Wally". There didn't seem to be any point to this muppet other than that he types on a typewriter, and even that amounted to nothing. The weird thing is that Kermit is in this special, so it's like it has two lead characters. It also had no plot and a couple of really creepy moments like Mia Farrow singing to a dog muppet and George the Janitor admitting to being in love with his mop and then participating in a song about it. The first seasons DVD set contained the other pilot episode. That one had Nigel (who became the pit orchestra conductor) as the host, but at least some research reveals a reason for that - Jim Henson was afraid that Kermit might not appeal to an adult audience because he was associated with Sesame Street. But I have no idea what the hell is up with Wally. Another thing about the Valentine's Day special is that I don't even really understand the concept. The other pilot and the actual show are pretty distinct - the Muppets are working in a theater putting on a vaudeville style show. But the premise of the Valentine's Day show seems to be that there are just some muppets in a house. The muppet "technology" has improved over the first season. I rewatched the Season 1 opening and noticed how "ghetto" it is compared to Season 2's opening. When the lines of chorus girls and guys come out onto the stage, their mouth movements really aren't synced with the lyrics of the song. At the end of the segment, when the muppets are all sitting on a tiered stage that rises up kind of like a wedding cake, the ones on the end aren't moving at all...until the end when they robotically raise their arms. Also, it would appear the opening was filmed before they had a lot of muppets constructed because the Trumpet Lady appears in both the orchestra and in the chorus girl lineup. Season 1 also had a lot of moments where muppeteers would become momentarily visible if you were looking for it. I've been specifically trying to spot errors like that this season, and aside from one moment where the arm sock on a chicken became visible when it stood up too high, I haven't spotted any. They even sometimes light the stage in such a way that the muppets' shadows will be on the wall. You'd think that could easily lead to a muppeteer's shadow being casted on the wall, too, but so far I haven't noticed any. They also had a scene where Petula Clark danced with a very tall muppet that was not just a person in a costume. He was manipulated by muppeteers dressed in black against a black screen, which is a technique they've used a lot on this show and Sesame Street, but that was the largest scale I've seen it done on yet.
Crawl and 1OOO It's weird that the show advanced technically so much in one season, when you consider that Jim Henson had supposedly been working on muppets for 30 years before The Muppet Show. I'm not sure exactly where that figure came from -- he was only 53 when he died, and that was 9 years after The Muppet Show finished. But The Muppet Show definitely started several years after Sesame Street.
Flying Omelette
Flying Omelette Crawl and 1OOO wrote: Anyway, it's kind of mixed. It can be funny, and even kind of addictive (some episodes are only about 5 minutes long, so it's easy to watch a lot in a row), but it can get really repetitive, too. There's only so much "huh, huh, huh" and "That was cool" that you can take. I think what I've seen of Beavis and Butt-head so far is funnier than what I saw of Ren & Stimpy.
Crawl and 1OOO
INFPGamer
Flying Omelette I did think that one where they were arguing over whether that costumed guy in the Grim Reaper video was Wolverine was funny, though. Edit - To elaborate a little on that: I don't really think the guy in the video was supposed to Wolverine, but the conversation still reminded me of some times when I'd get into very similar arguments with people over similar things. For example, that guy at the old N-Sider board who was arguing with me and Sethra that there was no way the voice actor for Goku (Dragon Ball Z) was the same VA as Cheetor (Beast Wars), even though it certainly was (Ian James Corlett.)* I also know I've gotten into that "drawn differently" argument, too, but I don't know exactly with who or over what. Maybe it was Real Ghostbusters. It could've been a conversation like, "That's not really Egon. He doesn't look at all like Harold Ramis", and my reply could've been, "No, it's the same character. They just draw him differently". Again, that may not be exactly how it went, but I know I've had things like that happen. * - And here's another example of stupid, stupid, stupid Wikipedia editorializing. They claim Ian Corlett's most well-known role was Filbert in Pocket Dragon Tales. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_James_Corlett Best known on what planet?? I've never even heard of Pocket Dragon Tales before, let alone Filbert, and we're talking about the man who played Goku and Cheetor, as well as Dr. Wily on Captain N, and Mega Man in the Ruby/Spears Mega Man cartoon!
TaroSH And in Contra 3 I made it to the part of level 4 with the missiles.
CLOUDBOND007 I wonder if I've now used the PS3 more for DVD's than for games.
Flying Omelette Flying Omelette wrote: I also know I've gotten into that "drawn differently" argument, too, but I don't know exactly with who or over what. Maybe it was Real Ghostbusters. It could've been a conversation like, "That's not really Egon. He doesn't look at all like Harold Ramis", and my reply could've been, "No, it's the same character. They just draw him differently". Again, that may not be exactly how it went, but I know I've had things like that happen. Crawl didn't quite remember what I was referring to with this, but when Beavis & Butt-head are watching the Grim Reaper video (I don't remember for which song it was), there's a part where a guy is dressed in a bear costume with long claws, and Butt-head says something like, "I think that's supposed to be Wolverine." And Beavis replies with something like, "No way! That doesn't look like Wolverine!", and Butt-head says, "Yes it is. They just draw him differently." We finished watching The Muppet Show Season 2. Most of those "Muppet interview" skits in the bonus features were pointless and why does the new Miss Piggy muppet look like she has rabbit ears? And I hate that new Gonzo muppet, too. His nose does not look like it's continuous. The curled part looks like it was tacked on later. And his hair is short and curly-looking instead of long and shaggy. Maybe it's just my imagination but those changes along with the way they "explained" him in Muppets From Space seem like they're trying to "normalize" the character, whereas before the whole point of Gonzo is that he was weird and inexplicable and did really bizarre things (like eating a tire to the tune of "Flight of the Bumblebee".) It's hard for me to say if I overall liked Season 2 more than Season 1. Season 2 improved in the technical areas (better-looking muppet redesigns, better intro, less mistakes where puppeteers become visible, and more complex muppetry for some sketches), but I think Season 1 may have a larger quantity of memorable songs. The amount of really funny sketches and jokes seemed like it was about equal for both, although Season 2 may have improved here, too, but I'd probably have to rewatch Season 1 to be sure. Season 2 had more Bunsen & Beaker and Swedish Chef sketches. Season 1 had a sketch in almost every episode where Fozzie would tell bad jokes in a standup routine while getting heckled by Statler and Waldorf and lot of times these weren't very funny...almost to the point of being painful in some cases. In Season 2, it seemed they only did those sketches if they actually had some funny material for Fozzie to work with. Two sketches that cracked me up the hardest were the "Animal bowls overhanded" one and Dr. Teeth's Cheesecake song (I'd post the video for that, but it's funnier in the context of the entire episode). Man, it's sort of been a rude awakening realizing how much I ripped off this show with my original RAU comics. I'm beginning to wonder now if the whole reason I started writing those comics was out of frustration from the show being canceled. It's not just the premise and setting I ripped off, but I have a feeling I may have copied entire jokes, too. I hate to toot my own horn, but I think there may be one area in which I was better and that's in the strength of my female characters. After awhile, pretty much every female character who wasn't Miss Piggy faded to background (characters like Miss Mousey, Mildred Huxtetter, Hilda the Seamstress, Zelda Rose, and Wanda). Janice (of the Electric Mayhem) hung around awhile, but became less prominent in Muppet-related things over time. I have to wonder if some of those characters would have hung around longer had Eren Ozker not quit the show after the first season. I theorize that Hilda at least would have stayed around because she seemed like a favorite of hers.
Crawl and 1OOO
TaroSH What version of this game is Kurt playing? http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/miraclewarriors/miraclewarriors.htm There's only three pieces of equipment for each character - you can buy a dagger or sword from the shops, as well as armor and a shield, and they're all the same for everybody. Then some kings give each character the "best" weapons just for you having found them, or else I already had enough fangs when I talked to them that it only seemed like they gave them to me just for having the right person, then you have to get their best armors and sheilds by beating a boss monster in caves (a wolf called a Senpi for the armor, and a winged snake called a Hanj for the shield). Maybe the final guy is different, I haven't gotten him yet, but I'm sure his equipment will also be free. Well, then you can pay 60,000 gilder to have that best weapon upgraded, but that's it. I've had hardly any funding problems - once I had to sell all my fangs because I was running low on cash after buying that weapon upgrade, but now I've got over 200,000 gilder and all I'm having to buy is Healings and Herbs. Battles aren't fast, but they also aren't slow. And the level grinding isn't nearly as bad as Dragon Warrior. Also, while I really like the overworld theme the rest of the soundtrack is actually quite annoying. I'm not saying it's a good game (it's really not bad, either. It's okay, I guess), but that's almost as bad as when GameInformer said it took hours to get to the tower in Tao's Adventure when it took ten minutes.
Flying Omelette I wondered if maybe we were being too hard on Kurt and I felt kind of bad about going off on him for that Killer7 review, but we aren't the only ones who have been calling him into question lately. http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?t=2059&start=75
Another thing about the new versions of the old muppets is that the new actors can't do their voices correctly. Gonzo is particularly bad. He's got a deep voice and sounds kind of like Harvey Fierstein, giving the impression that he's gay. Yeah. And the way the muppet looks (the short curly hair instead of the shagginess and the pink shirt) looks gay, too. I don't have a problem with muppets looking/acting/sounding gay, but it's like this is a totally different character now. I guess the people writing for him now don't go for his whole chicken and cow leg fetish. Miss Piggy seems like she's spaced out on drugs. The person performing her in those mock-interviews almost seemed like he/she(whatever) was breaking character. Like with the way she was pronouncing words like "luge" and "louvre". That seemed more like an actor making fun of the way the words sounded with her voice then something the actual character would say. And I now wonder if the reason for the rabbit-like ears is because they're trying to give her a "Playboy Bunny" kind of look. At this point, I really have no desire to see any of the other movies that feature the modern versions of these muppets (such as Muppets Wizard of Oz).
da dick i'm gonna use my indie path save to replay the point where i choose to go indie or dark. that's should be the level where liana and lana will join the team and get their levels re-averaged when they join. then i'll skip to the last dark scenario. i had a look at the other dark scenarios. only the last 2 differ from the indie scenarios, and they look much easier with weaker enemies. the last dark scenario does look like a clone of a pretty difficult scenario in warsong. the enemies are all holed up in fort surrounded by water, there's only 1 narrow entrance into the fort, but the fort can be accessed from the sides by units(infantry, fliers and ghosts) which can move across castle wall tiles. right now, i actually have a new light path game where i'm trying to get everyone to reach a class which doesn't have a secret 5th class(differs between characters). that and i wanna try to go down the storyline where i'll get to fight chaos.feel like dropping that game and just use level skip and my seemingly invincible trio of hein, rohga and mario(from indie path game) to beat chaos. ... beat the dark path. my memory's fuzzy.i had a look at the dark path scenarios again, and found that only scenario 17 is the similar the indie counterpart. instead of having to defeat imelda(as a queen) in 20 turns, for the dark path, i have to defeat a weaker vargas(as a general) in 20 turns, and that's with lana and liana helping out the last dark scenario was a bit harder than i thought. after defeating calais, she'll summon the goddess of light, who will in turn summon garrett/ledin from warsong. that was unexpected. with the goddess and ledin made brillant team together. killed my rohga and esto. in the last indie scenario, the goddess summons both sieghart(from some ol' eldea game) and ledin, but they were teamed up with the weaker shrine maidens(liana & lana), while the goddess stood far apart from them. the ending cut scene was appropiately(sp?) evil. with the goddess defeated, langrisser loses its power and boser pops out to shatter it into piece. then he turns the sky black with alhazard. then it cuts to some scene of villagers commenting about fish and animals "fading(?!?) away". the epilogue says that wario eventually ruled over the humans for boser and killed off lots of people who rebelled against him. sonia became fawned by the humans who once abused her, and thought she finally avenged herself. for getting defeated once, rohga's "bad" ending was just a sentence saying that sonya treats him coldy. bleh. other than that, he continued fighting for boser. dark princess lana married boser and sat on some throne of bones as the queen of darkness. liana was defeated once before, so her bad ending was that she commited suicide after boser's mind control spell worn out by accident. osto and esto still die, eventually.
TaroSH Then some kings give each character the "best" weapons just for you having found them, or else I already had enough fangs when I talked to them that it only seemed like they gave them to me just for having the right person Slight oversight on my part. I had to give a king 300 fangs to get the main character's weapon. But the rest of them have either given me their weapons for free, or traded for fangs without my noticing because I already had enough. And really, I have almost 10,000 fangs now. I seriously doubt I'll have to go grinding for more if I do happen into somebody who wants to trade, and if they want 10,300 fangs, enemies are dropping so many of them now it'd probably take me at most five minutes to get 300 more. If there's one complaint I have related to the fangs, it's that when you sell them you have to sell ALL of them.
James FP I also mapped a few of the C and B area overworlds in Might & Magic.
da dick
CLOUDBOND007 One thing that's good about this game is that it doesn't seem to be resorting to having you collect 10 red stars and 100 coins to fill out the game. The time trials (and other upcoming trials like limited health) are a more interesting way of reaching 120 stars. Compared to Mario Sunshine, this game is extremely polished. I feel bad that in Japan, those non-games the DS and Wii have in abundance (like brain training) are outselling it.
Flying Omelette James FP wrote: I don't remember the number of the stage, but I got to the river level in Pocky & Rocky with the Kappa enemies. That game is incredibly difficult compared to Legend of the Mystical Ninja. I wish LotMN's action stages had been this difficult, it would've been a more memorable game. Those two games get compared a lot, but aside from the quirky Japanese settings, I don't really think they're all that similar. Mystical Ninja is a sidescrolling platformer. P&R is an overhead shooter (though one that doesn't automatically scroll).
TaroSH The boss of stage 5 was actually kind of interesting.
sethrashnoo
Crawl and 1OOO TaroSH wrote: I made it to the final stage of Contra 3, to that mole-face thing after you beat the Contra 1 Final Boss tribute. That boss (the mole-faced one, assuming we're talking about the same thing) is a Super C Final Boss tribute. As for the stage 5 boss, on Hard Mode, that's one thing I never got a very good strategy for.
Captain Ladd Spencer Did they make Colonel Bahamut up for Hard Corps? Because there's been no mention of him, and I kind of doubt he's going to show up in the ending.
CLOUDBOND007 Another thing worth mentioning, not necessarily a lot of fun, but pretty crazy, was the first level of the desert galaxy. At first it starts pretty simply with you jumping into whirlwinds and then spinning to fly for short distances. It then randomly turns into a side scroller and then a wall-jumping extravaganza. I got a star from a Ghost House/Haunted Mansion and met Luigi there. It was obviously referencing his GameCube game with the level being called "Luigi's Haunted Mansion". Really, most of the game is really set in traditional (or series appropriate) environments with varying instances of unusual gravity mechanics. There are galaxies that are completely set in space but these are very much overrepresented in the videos that were put out before the game's release.
Crawl and 1OOO Did they make Colonel Bahamut up for Hard Corps? Because there's been no mention of him, and I kind of doubt he's going to show up in the ending. Yeah. Hard Corps in general has more story than the earlier games. Deadeye Joe, the hacker, all that stuff was made up exclusively for Hard Corps.
Captain Ladd Spencer
DEATHAMSTER In other news, I beat Final Fantasy Mystic Quest in one weekend. Go me.
Captain Ladd Spencer Jimbo and Sully You have got to be kidding me. I made it to the Queen again, and if you pick up the flamethrower that flies by just before it's actually possible to take out the left arm before it even has a chance to attack. Oh man, you have to beat the Contra and Super C final bosses, and that flying alien that takes for-freaking-ever to kill, and the queen in one go? Although I pretty much got the first two down where I can pretty much beat them without dying, this is going to be a bitch... And if you make it to Level 5 boss with the Laser, or destroy those worms until one drops a Laser, you can beat it in about ten seconds.
Crawl and 1OOO Captain Ladd Spencer wrote: I'm pretty sure that doesn't work on Hard.
Captain Ladd Spencer I pretty much got the first two down where I can pretty much beat them without dying Hooray for redundancy!
Captain Ladd Spencer
CLOUDBOND007
Lord Vyce
Captain Ladd Spencer My main strategy for the brain was to watch that one that makes that snake-like tentacle that whips widly around the screen, then fire when it's on the other side of the brain. Pretty much everything else I could dodge (the legs give me trouble, but in all my attempts in this round I only got it once, maybe it's close to that snake and that's why I never really hit it) There's something off about this game's hit detection. Sometimes, a bullet has passed just over me, and I died. Other times, an enemy's hit my head (that flying dragon comes to mind), and I survived. I made it to the Queen again, and if you pick up the flamethrower that flies by just before it's actually possible to take out the left arm before it even has a chance to attack. Um, woops, that's not right. But it is possible and very easy with the laser or grenades. Found this. http://flyingomelettespalace.yuku.com/topic/2011 I'm with Facility on the overhead stages.
CLOUDBOND007 As for other stuff, there was an enjoyable race against a Boo in the haunted galaxy, a trip to kill some giant eels using shells in a special stage, chasing a rabbit Mario 64 style through a maze on the surface of a fully explorable cube, and a couple other things I forget at the moment. I have another Bowser level ready to play. The game alternates between Bowser and Bowser Jr. as the boss of each galaxy, apparently.
CLOUDBOND007 Cutting down your health to 3 (occasionally 6 with a rare powerup) did a lot to make the game more intense. 1-up mushrooms are around but not nearly as plentiful as I'd imagined and you don't get to hang on to them between sessions, anyway. I remember that Sunshine had some really difficult sections but if you average it all out over the whole game, I think this is the hardest 3D Mario by a good margin. I've been told that the minimum needed to fly to the center of the Galaxy to rescue Peach is 60. I don't remember what it was in Mario 64 and Sunshine.
Flying Omelette Lord Vyce wrote: I finally got involved in some wartime battles in Inindo. Forget the game, I just want to conquer the whole country of Japan! But it's so hard to get anyone to go to battle with me. I wonder if it's possible to conquer Azuchi this way and not have to complete any more dungeons. Probably not. 0o I wondered that, too, but no one would ever agree to go to war with that province, so I guess not.
Captain Ladd Spencer
Captain Ladd Spencer Miracle Warriors wants to be too clever for its own good. I actually found where the Key of Heaven was kept on my own. In a mountain range was this conspicuous square of desert, so I walked on it and pressed C, picked the right spell, and found myself in the dungeon. I got the Key, left, and had no clue where to go next, so checked RPGclassics for a hint. The "real" way you were supposed to find these spots is to go double what a scroll tells you to. Somebody tells you Iason was twice as fast as a normal human, which just sounds like him praising Iason, but it actually means he would have traveled twice as far in a day (I guess it takes a day in game time to move one square. That I figured). Plus, some of the directions are cryptic, like instead of "west" the scroll says "towards not dawn" and South is "towards Spring". Some people you talk to tell you what this crap means, but what the hell? Plus, somebody says "Medi's town used to be called Saria", and you found Medi on a completely different continent. The regular steps take you to to some momuments, which eventually lead to a monster that kills your blacksmith when you beat it. I noticed one of those monuments was halfway between the town and that patch of desert. I kind of want to slap myself for not having put the pieces together myself, but another part of my can't blame myself.
Crawl and 1OOO towards not dawn I guess this must be because the sun rises in the East at dawn, so "not dawn" would be west. Why "South" would be "towards Spring", I dunno.
Captain Ladd Spencer Another example of the game trying to be too clever is when you buy herbs. Kurt mentioned this, and he actually was right about one thing. When you buy herbs, the seller asks "Is 2000 gilder too steep?" which is confusing in two ways. First, it doesn't make it clear you get five herbs for that price, not one, but also you have to answer "Yes" to buy them which make no sense in that context.
Captain Ladd Spencer The final dungeon actually had three floors. The second one had four staircases, and three of them warped you to random spots on the map. They may have been predetermined, because one of them sent me into another dungeon. It wasn't offensive to play, and as far as Dragon Warrior clones go you can do a lot worse. The main thing hurting this game is the lack of variety in battles - you just select Fight over and over again, selecting a different character to attack with when one's HP gets low. Although it did get kind of annoying when I'd get into battles every step and couldn't run from them. What kind of surprised me was the final boss didn't have any magic, which I'm actually very thankful for. I beat her with all my characters having one hit left. Out of battle exploration is okay, I guess, although the frequent encounters to detract from it. This is also a sign I'd probably like Etrian Odyssey, because I actually enjoyed mapping the later dungeons in this game.
TWEETER911 Captain Ladd Spencer wrote: This is also a sign I'd probably like Etrian Odyssey, because I actually enjoyed mapping the later dungeons in this game. Dot dot dot.
TaroSH
...does that appease the great Tweeter?
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TaroSH
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TaroSH
TWEETER911
Well, if you geta 'round to playing it, enjoy, & do something CRAWLAND wouldn't ever do, and that's try and have fun. Or something. I dunno!!!!
Crawl and 1OOO And I've leveled up some spells and weapons and stuff.
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007 He's not TUFF E NUFF. The hard games, they burns us.
TWEETER911
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007
Flying Omelette
Crawl and 1OOO
da dick
looking very tasty. i started a new game with monica, cause i'm a sucker for blondes. not sucha great choice since i find that in her supposed "intro" quest(i was reading some faqs about how to get certain characters to join), harid(the black dude) and her maid katarina(in her own quest) both have much better starting stats.
doesn't matter, i will prevail. the 2nd frontier character i played(before completing T260G's quest) was emilia, and i didn't do too badly before checking with an FAQ. well, only started checking an FAQ after beating T260G's quest.. hard to figure what the hell to do assellus's quest, and beat some of emilia's bosses when i trained her in too many different skills/magic. this time, i'm a bit lazy and downloaded some in-depth gamefaqs, and saved a magic list from rpgclassics.
the graphics and music in this game are pretty amazing even for dated SNES graphics. maybe as good as star ocean, though it's ROM size is about the same as FF3(US version). liking this game even more, after i found out the various formations have different effects which could complement certain skills. i think i'm sticking with the desert lance formation right now. it makes the enemy focus their attacks on 1 character who gets a defence boost from the formation, and allows for some special bow attacks. but i think the special formation attacks only works in commander mode when i have 6 players in a team.
... started another game with sarah and finished her intro, which looks similar to monica's but i haven't completed monica's intro so i'm not too sure. the intro goes something like: "protect monica, visit the vampire(suppose to be a friend of monica's brother,mikeal), go treasure hunting for heck, return to vampire, get rewarded for protecting monica." the character guide advises me not to use sarah and her samurai toyboy too much, as they'll both get forced out of the party near the end. in fact, sarah has such weak stats probably because she's made for commander mode(it's a semi-auto battle mode when my main hero/heroine is place at the back of a 5-man team). i might stop using sarah when i find a better archer for my hunter formation, or better mage for the moon magic combo in the default freestyle formation. however, her toyboy is too damn powerful-looking to give up on. he starts with archery skill of 3(but his dexterity sucks), a rather high 6 in big sword, and a very good(for a starter) katana(attack power 27) with a built-in sword tech. he's more poweful(but starts with less skills) than harid!
finding it weird that the merchant class increases dexterity more than the hunter class. i would think a merchant(described by thomas as a "jack of all trades") could use less dexterity than a hunter(i'm thinking hunts with bow and arrows), but the hunter class actually increases intelligence just a bit less than the scholar class. wonder if they misnamed the classes or got the stat modifiers wrong.
played through katarina's intro which is much much shorter than sarah's. all i had to do was hide my equipment and find a prison key before getting arrested, break out of prison, meet mikeal(sp?) and harid, and fight a boss near them. actually i made it slightly longer by wandering around the castle and fighting some slimes and goblins. after that, it's the same reward ceremony for protecing monica, which is also seen in sarah's quest. but in addition to that, there's a scene which sets the background for katarina's quest. some spy diguised himself as mikeal seduces katarina in some garden, then they walk off-screen and it blacks out(nookie?). when they return, the spy asks for katarina's royal sword(the overpowered "masquerade") and runs off with it. and then it's another scene where katarina cut off her hair and tells the king(mikeal) that she's going off to retrieve the sword. bla bla bla. mikeal tells her she can't return to the kingdom without the sword. hmm... that sucks, 'cause that means i can't recruit thomas(temporary until he completes his own little subquest), sarah, ellen and harid(who should all be in the pub of loanne in the beginning) earlier. but i guess she makes up for that with her great stats. wonder if the powerful harid will have even more recruitment restrictions. i think the guide said something about his high greed level which may piss off certain potential party members, so they would never join him.
looked at the character guide again. monica's stats are worse than sarah's. strangely her HP increased faster than sarah. maybe it's her lower constitution? but sara's sister, ellen, has lower con. maybe it's gotta do with class, or maybe they just wanted sarah to suck and be stuck at the back as a commander.
in katarina's quest, i spent a ridiculous amount of time playing the company-buying minigame after getting thomas to join. got 10 000 credits from fullbright after beating it. i think there's 2 more company-buying minigames i can play later. with the rewards from these minigames, maybe i don't need to use the royal ring trick. well, still haven't made any progress for kat's main sword-finding quest.think there's some quest in muse town which will only be triggered when my HP is high enough. i'm guessing jackal(who may have killed nora's master) or maximus(collector of weapons) has something to do with it, but can't trigger any related quests in muse(met nora there) or lance(where the holy king's palace is). guess i should visit fullbright, since he's related to the holy king. maybe he had something stolen too?
mechwarrior 4: mercs
never read any really bad reviews about mechwarrior games, except maybe for a pretty grainy-looking early mechwarrior game for the SNES. so far, this looks like hardcore sex for robot lovers(uuuhhhnnn...). booming soundtrack, large variety of mechs to use(well, some of them require expansion paks to use), and there's nice sexy colourful equipment specs file in PDF format. the eq specs shows all the stats for the weapon and dataporn(includes sexy screenshots of them) for the mech models. i could wet myself with victoria's secret pics and this.
as for the plot, it brings back memories of the battletech cartoon. i think it was based on the mechwarrior world(i think it was originally a pen and paper rpg) created by FASA, the guys who made shadowrun. should be at least fairly engrossing. or full of manly bravado.
hmmm... game kept hanging even though i've set the details to the minimal. maybe i should turn off the music. or maybe my PC is overheating. right. and my long-range beam weapons in the game keep overheating too. missiles are a better choice for long range attacks, but the ammo runs out fast.i guess the most well-balanced mobile suit i could create would have to be made for close range combat, since the close-range stuff all weight much less(light mechs can't carry much weight). weight management seems to be more important than money management here.
hate how i can't strafe easily in this game, like in other shooter games, but this is more like a RTS/sim.
Crawl and 1OOO There were a couple of parts there that were kind of like mysteries. There's one switch that you can't reach at first -- it's above a little brick ledge that acts like a one-way path. Oddly, I was hit by an enemy and launched above that ledge, where I could touch the switch!! However, there must be some sort of "failsafe" coding there, because I wasn't able to activate the switch that way. Later, there was a color puzzle, which wasn't tricky at all, but I must have walked past it without noticing it at all the first time, because I ended up looping around that area. Anyway, that dungeon was really quite long. I *guess* I wasn't that much in danger of running out of supplies, but I did use, I think, at least 2 fairy nuts (which recharge your magic). That means I had 1 or 2 left, but I previously have never used more than 1 in any given dungeon. I told FO that I didn't like mode 7 overworlds like in this game. She said they were great. Yeah, well, they *look* fantastic. But they're not functional at all. Whenever I have to go somewhere, I have to look it up on the flat map.
Flying Omelette
Crawl and 1OOO The way you use the whip in this game to move is weird, dare I say unfinished. You have to kind of mill around on the other side until the screen "pulls" toward the pole. So, sometimes you have to move *away* from the pole to make the screen move *towards* it. Before the screen pulls, you can whip the pole and nothing happens. I think you also need to have the whip equipped, or the screen won't pull. So, anyway, I eventually figured there must have been a pole there, even if I couldn't see it, and got back. After that, I got through it fairly quickly, though again I had used some fairy nuts. So, I was glad to get out and recover and save.
TaroSH
Crawl and 1OOO Anyway, so I did all that stuff. The last Mech Rider boss, according to FO, was on the Mana Fortress (though at this point in the game, the game itself does not tell you that). He cast Wall on himself, so I had to chip away at him until he had only 5 MP left (Wall takes 6 to cast) and his wall ran out, at which point I blitzed him with Sprite. I gained a few spell levels, but holy crap. I'm getting weapon orbs left and right. It would take a huge amount of dedicated time to get everyone to the maximum weapon levels. Also, Genie is still at level 0 for Dryad! It's almost impossible to get an opportunity for her to cast a Dryad spell. The only options are Revive (which requires a character to be dead -- at least I've been getting a lot of Doom boobytrapped chests) and Wall. And casting Wall on a character isn't a good idea, since then you can't heal them. If you try, the magic will bounce off and heal an enemy. And the spell seemingly lasts forever. I cast Wall on the Genie in the Lofty Mountains when trying to level up spells, and it was still active when I fought the Mech Rider. So, I had to use items rather than magic to heal her.
Anyway, I went to the extinct volcano, and entered the Pure Land, which is one of the nicer looking areas in this game. It's a very lush forest. It also is loaded with boss fights. I have so far at least fought two dragons, one of those bird-head creatures, a snake, and a Thunder Gigas. I think I can kind of imagine by now what makes people think this game is special. Maybe it's not about particular moments in the game, but rather some cumulative effect. You have come a long way since the beginning, and passed a lot of locals (the seasonal forests, the mushroom areas, the city of gold, Gaea's navel, all those palaces), and when you think back over the game, you might think, "Wow, I really have done a lot." And that impression might be reinforced at the end of the game when the Mana Fortress rises and a pall is cast over the rest of the world. It's like, all those places you visited and maybe got attached to are now under a shadow.
Flying Omelette Jema called that palace the Grand Palace (FO says I made a mistake in calling it the Great Palace), but the guy on the lighthouse called it the "Mana Palace. Well, all the palaces that have Mana Seeds are Mana Palaces. He's just calling it by its generic group name rather than its specific name. FO keeps telling me that the game's text isn't confusing, but I think that's an example of how it is. I never said it wasn't confusing. In fact, I gave examples of how it is in an earlier post. I just don't think it's as confusing as you're making it out to be. This isn't exactly complicated literature here. Also, it's confusing that there's a "Mana Palace" which is distinct from the "Mana Fortress". I never even heard of the Mana Palace before that moment, when it said, "The Mana Palace is sinking!", and then after that, the Mana Fortress is *flying* in the air. No, the line is, "This place is sinking!", meaning the continent that the Ancient City and Grand Palace are located on is sinking. The only place "Mana Palace" is mentioned in the game is by the lighthouse keeper. I was like, WTF? There was also something about how the Mana Palace was supposed to be under the coral area, Well, you were underneath of it earlier in the Ancient City. Remember, you had to go down a staircase from the outside to the underground area. It was obvious that place had been underwater for a long time because it had a lot of beach sand, sea anemones, and coral built up in it. I'm not quite sure on how you end up in the back door of the Mana Fortress from the back of the Grand Palace, except that maybe that part of it was surfaced that way, with the rest still being underground.
TaroSH Something odd about Chatting Parodius: this game gets more aggressive the more powered up you are. Sometimes I've been pretty much maxed out, and these cartoon moai heads would be spewing out strings of kissprint-shaped bullets, and the penguins around them where firing off slews of their own bullets. I'd die, and then they'd be occasionally spitting out one, and the penguins would mostly be staring at me. There's also a boss that's a pig-shaped aircraft, and it shoots canonballs out its snout in a fan pattern. Sometimes it'd be shooting three slow moving ones with about a five second delay in between, and others it'd be rapidly firing five fast moving ones.
James FP When FO posted a link to an interview with Ted Woolsey awhile ago, I got the impression from it that the way he translated Secret of Mana was in blocks of text without really knowing what order they were supposed to go in. Maybe that's why some dialogue is confusing.
Crawl and 1OOO There are other games with "AI". Battle Garegga is infamous for it. Just about everything affects it in that game. People generally kill themselves to keep it down.
TaroSH Sounds like it has an AI system like Zanac. But Zanac's is based on how much you shoot your main weapon, not how powered-up you are. And also which weapons you pick up.
In Shadowgate, I beat the Wraith, and that got me a cloak, and another deadend.
TaroSH
And I started Gargoyle's Quest (for the third time), and I'm to the part where I go through some platforming stage trying to find the King. First time I ever got past that tower!
CLOUDBOND007 On days I don't play Mario Galaxy, I've been making one last attempt at reading Lord of the Rings. I always end up moving on to something else before I finish. I got this insanely nice collector's edition hardcover for Christmas. It looks even nicer in reality. I'm enjoying the story so far as well, but I'm not very far in yet. It's definitely interesting to read this when the movie versions of the events are so much burned into my memory. The more time goes by, the less I care for those films.
sethrashnoo
TaroSH I beat the Firedrake in Shadowgate.
TaroSH
Captain Ladd Spencer It's actually neat to get stuck, feel like I'm never going to solve this, turn the game off and go do something else for a couple hours, and then come back and accomplish something.
Crawl and 1OOO
CLOUDBOND007
da dick
yep. i think the osiris is my favourite mec right now, but i'll stick to using the awesome(that's its chassis/model name) mec since my reflexes aren't as good as the AI controlling my team mates. the osiris can be almost as fast as a flea, and its weight limit isn't ridiculously low(unlike the flea). however i think i'll eventually have to use heavier mecs or i won't have enough firepower to take out large numbers of enemy heavy/assault mecs. maybe i'll replace my osirises with medium-class shadowcats, if i'm satisfied with its performance on the field. maybe i could just support my osirises with another assault-class(heaviest/toughest class) mec. can't wait to gain access to an altas(has the best armour) mec. ...argh! after getting one of my best pilots(who was using an osiris modified for close combat with increased speed) killed in an assault mission, i decided to replace 2 out of 4 of my osirises with an assault-class mauler and another shadowcat. hope i don't lose any more good pilots. the free market hardly respawn any good ones. .. the shadowcats disappointed me. no more good pilots got killed, but both kitties got destroyed before my osirises got destroyed in another "heavy-threat" mission. well, there's no more osirises and shadowcats left on the market, so i went for 4 light ravens. they worked very well with similar configurations inspired by my wolfhound mec. well-armored and armed,but still moderately fast light-mecs can quickly surround and take down heavy mecs. devastating. if only i could buy more wolfhounds which have better armour than ravens. my wolfhound outlasted an assault-class mauler mec i bought...but i did assign the mauler to a weaker pilot. since i also can't get anymore ravens, i'm buying 2 hellspawns, which are similar to the shadowcats. hopefully, they'll last longer when i config them with more armour. seem pretty difficult to stay neutral while playing with the gray death legion as my sponsor. their loyalty with the steiner archon forces me to gain alignment points with the steiners even when i'm taking on neutral contracts. as for the wolf's dragoon sponsor, it's the exact opposite. they seem to side with davion, which is weird since they originate from the clans, who are suppose to hate all inner sphere people. according to a review, the kell hounds seem to be neutral to both sides of the civil war. don't wanna play with them since their benefits are not as good as the gray death and wolf's dragoons. hounds get better starting equipment and early access to clan tech, but wolfies get clan tec right from the start. gray death gives more starting funds and early access to "lostech", which seem to be just advanced inner sphere stuff. the highlanders don't give any starting adavantage, but they get paid better per contract. ... arrr.. the heavy-threat missions are kicking my ass. i'm losing money on on half of these mission because mec damage repairs and a couple of my heavy mecs blowing up on me. switching to unlimited ammo and no heat in the option to make mec configurations less tedious. but i guess the enemies also get the advantage of no heat and unlimited ammo. the flamethrower weapon still seems to stun them even with no heat management. i'm now taking on a (possibly) final mission that supports the davion faction. i didn't really want to support davion but the davion missions were easier than the steiner and remaining neutral missions. oh, and i'm currently colleuseum(sp?) champion on solaris. i think there's a grand championship game if i become champion of the 2 other arenas, but it's too time-consuming. i was mostly doing the arenas fights just to raise money for bigger mecs for the tougher missions. i guess the highlander sponsorship would have made it easier to earn money for bigger mec later on. i'm putting a flamethrower on almost all my mecs just for its stun effect. too bad i lost most my flamethrowers in the arena and the tougher missions. realised that the configurations that worked in the arena, work just as well in the missions. i've made my whole team into close-range, moderate speed(~90kph), flame and laser shooters, with a couple or more machine guns and missiles added just in case the enemy has reflective armour. having a more diverse team just didn't work well with a stupid AI which keeps charging stupidly at the enemy and trying to circle them, instead of sniping(or using a hit-and-run tatic) with the mid/long-range weapons i gave it.
CLOUDBOND007 http://www.cb007.com/images/sammaxfilesize.JPG I've now got 45 stars in Mario Galaxy.
Captain Ladd Spencer I went to GameFAQs to figure out the fountain puzzle. I have a small gripe with that puzzle: It's implied you're already wearing gauntlets, both by the cursor, and when you put the cloak on it says it barely fits over your armor, so I wasn't looking for hand protection, but a base to dump in the fountain. Oh well. I also went to GameFAQs and read a mostly spoiler-free item guide. The only thing I'm missing is the Staff of Ages, so I guess I need to figure out where to use the Orb, Blade, and/or Wand to get it.
TaroSH Hahaha, that ending was awesome. Overall, I think I did pretty good about not relying on GameFAQs to get through this. Two things.
TWEETER911 TaroSH wrote: ...and I GameFAQed it. Okay, THAT is something I deserve a slap for not getting myself, although I may have been hasty about looking it up just because I knew I was so close to the end of the game. Hahaha, that ending was awesome. Overall, I think I did pretty good about not relying on GameFAQs to get through this. Two things. Two things.....?
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007 I've made it to 51 stars in Mario Galaxy, so 9 stars until I can presumably try and "beat" the game. I'm still finding it a joy to play. Even when I'm not really feeling motivated to play it, once I get started, it really draws me in. I think that Mario 64 and Sunshine fans will enjoy it the most, but even for people who much prefer the sidescrollers, there's still a lot for them to like. It does better than any 3D platformer I've yet played at capturing the fun and challenge of the sidescrollers it evolved from. The only thing that I was a little disappointed to see is a star (probably the first of several) where you collect a bunch of silver stars scattered about, kind of like the red coin challenges in the other games. Galaxy had avoided that sort of thing until now in favor of more varied things like finishing a stage without taking a hit, racing shadow/cosmic Mario to the finish, or having enemies move at super speed.
Crawl and 1OOO It's interesting to see what each of us have forgotten from this game. There are some things I remember that she hadn't, but some things I forgot, too. FO thinks she's on track to beat the game with 100%. We'll see...
TaroSH TaroSH wrote: That I looked up on GameFaqs. Two puzzles, specifically (although in one, I could have sworn I already tried it, maybe I didn't quite click the right spot) Okay, and an item list. But all I got out of that was "The only thing I'm missing is the Staff."
CLOUDBOND007
Flying Omelette In fact, one time after one of my runs through the game doing that, I was exploring in Norfair and walked through a wall into a hidden area. And that walk-through-wall thing didn't show up with the x-ray specs. After that, I think I thought, "Fuck, well, I'll never find everything if it's like that. I think I know what you're talking about, but I believe that's the only room that's like that. That fooled me at first, too, but there is a subtle hint there - the area that you walk through is shaped like the head of a monster and you walk right into its mouth to get to the hidden area. There is another walk-through wall at the top left of that room, but if you found the lower one, you've already been clued for that one. I'm missing an energy tank somewhere. I think it may be in the Wrecked Ship, but I'm not sure. I think I might also be missing some missiles, but I have a feeling I know where I missed one.
Crawl and 1OOO I think I know what you're talking about, but I believe that's the only room that's like that Yeah, but I found that room (on my own) AND examined literally every other room in the game with the X-ray specs, and STILL did not get 100%. Ridley was really easy when you have almost the maximum amount of energy tanks and almost all the missiles you can collect to that point In my opinion, that game starts going downhill, in terms of bosses, with the ghost in the crashed ship. That's the first boss in the game that's just a battle of attrition, and after that, just about all the battles are battles of attrition (except maybe the boss in Maridia, if you "cheat")
Lord Vyce I beat Inindo!! Damn that final boss was a pain. I really wish you could change your class in this game. Being stuck with a weak ninja for the whole game when better classes exist kinda sucks.
Flying Omelette
Lord Vyce
TWEETER911
Flying Omelette I think both versions are in robes, but they look different.
TWEETER911
Flying Omelette
TWEETER911 Ah ues, you're right. You get to fight him more than once. : O
Crawl and 1OOO Even though I tried to search as obsessively as I thought was possible, I guess it's still possible I overlooked some nook and cranny somehow. FO pointed out a missile hid in a lava pool near the beginning of Norfair, and wondered if I found that one. I honestly don't know if I did.
Crawl and 1OOO
Flying Omelette I'm sorry I didn't post more progress on this. For some reason I just didn't feel like it. Maybe it's because I wasn't sure if I was serious about sticking with it. I really should have been working on the next RAU Gallery sketch, but I just felt more like playing a game right now instead. I didn't want to start a new game because I didn't want to play something I would have a chance of disliking, so I looked around for an old favorite. I briefly considered Star Fox, but I already beat that game on all three paths awhile ago. I then saw A Link to the Past, but I beat that awhile ago, too, and only want to replay it when I'm ready to finally finish that Rec Room article that's still sitting on my hard drive. So the next game I found in the pile was Super Metroid. I didn't want to just play it, I figured I might want to complete a goal I've never completed before. I think I have gotten the best ending at some point, and I didn't want to do a speed run because I not only had forgotten too much about the game to do that, but that meant it would be over in a couple of hours and I kind of wanted something I could work on for at least a couple of nights. Honestly, I have no idea what missiles I had never found before. I know that the one you have to speed booster yourself up to in Maridia I had never gotten before. I was never able to pull that off. I got it this time (twice, because the first time I did it, I died shortly afterwards and hadn't yet saved.) However, I at least knew where that one was. But as for all of the others, well, I don't remember if I ever beat the game with 99% before, but nothing really stood out to me as "ooh, I don't think I ever found this before". FO pointed out a missile hid in a lava pool near the beginning of Norfair, and wondered if I found that one. I honestly don't know if I did. I temporarily forgot about that one. But I desperately started plumbing the recesses of my memory to the first time I played this game, and I seemed to recall that after I realized the Gravity Suit allows you to walk though some lava without getting hurt, I obsessively went around to areas with lava and X-ray scoped everywhere. That, IIRC, is the only missile it revealed. The last few things I had collected were things I had actually found quite easily on earlier plays, but just forgot about them or missed them somehow this time. For example, I kept running through that "staircase" shaped hallway in Brinstar with all the pipes that shoot out giant wasps. I kept looking at the pipes and thinking there was something to them, but I try shooting at them and X-ray scoping them, and it revealed nothing. I ran through this room about three times thinking that, but still didn't find anything. Then I remembered that I was making it harder than it really was - all you have to do is jump into the pipe that has no enemies coming out of it. Another was a missile in the Wrecked Ship. The funny thing is, I thought I had done that part earlier, but I remembered that you could bomb into a secret room on the left side of the ship and I noticed when traversing that area earlier that all the passages on the left that were filled in on my map appeared to be connected to normal doors. I could have absolutely sworn I had done that, though. I remember bombing and scoping the wall. I don't know why I didn't find it. The last one was the secret Super Missile that's hidden in the area of "Old Tourian" (the escape shaft, to be precise). I recalled a very tall shaft that you had to space jump up. Okay, actually you had to speed booster jump up, but I must have had memories of trying to space jump up it. Actually once I found that area again, the stronger memory that occurred to me was I fell underneath one of those yellow blob enemies and got stuck between it and the lava and died. My final time was a little over 8 hours, but I wasn't really doing a speed run anyway. I also managed to save the little creatures at the end. It's kind of sad, still, though because the Dachola had an egg it was tending to, and I don't think the egg made it. I also think it's kind of sad that you can't save the Tatoris (giant turtles in Maridia). I guess they're still considered enemies because the biggest one can damage you, but still...they're more helpful than harmful and the babies are cute. While Super Metroid's graphics may not be the best on the SNES, they do create a wonderfully deep atmosphere, and there is a real good variety of environments. The music is still pretty good. Although most of it is not what I'd consider music I'd want to listen to outside of the game, for some reason the Maridia music seemed especially strong to me this time. I kept hearing it in my head while at work.
CLOUDBOND007 I heard this was a really enjoyable game that doesn't follow the mold of a lot of recent PC RPG's. One interesting feature that's mentioned is that you make decisions here and there but don't really see the consequences until much farther on. So something I do at the beginning of the game would have major ramifications 10 hours later. Wow, this topic was being discussed earlier and the reception section on the Wikipedia article for this game is ridiculous.
Flying Omelette
INFPGamer The first time I played Metroid 2 it took me roughly 7.5 hours. I think that was the worst ending. The second playthrough it was about 2.5 and she had her armor off. I remember that was around the time I borrowed Final Fantasy Adventure from the same person. He eventually gave it to me, and I beat it at least 10 times. Man, I was obsessed with that game.
Captain Ladd Spencer After looking up the answer on GameFAQs, I guess it meant I was supposed to pass five entrances, then go all the way North, but jeez that's some bad wording.
da dick modified sexcards?(with breast covered for the yankees)
da dick mechwarrior 4: mercs
i think i forgot to mention that i'm playing with the gray death(as my sponsor) at recruit difficulty level, while playing with wolf's dragoon at elite difficulty. playing the solaris arenas at elite is quite different than playing at recuit level. the high speed mecs seem to become much more deadlier at higher difficulty levels. they seem to get better armour, and their aim almost 100% accurate. at recruit level, it's always the ones with the best armour who survive to duke it out with me. at elite, i have to hide from them, and occasionally shoot some long-range missiles at them, while they all kill each other. in the light-class fights, it's always the flea or the uller i have to fight for 1st place. the uller mec can equip more weapons than an osiris and can move almost as fast, so it's quite deadly. i have trouble aiming at it when at close range with its speed, and its armour is not too bad. as for the flea, i don't know how it survived that long. maybe the flea's AI is better at dodging bullets and taking potshots than i am. well, the same close-range, full armour, moderate speed configs still work in the arena. however that philosophy doesn't work in the missions.i usually hired light mecs in my elite game, and their firepower doesn't seem to be enough to even prick medium and heavy mecs. when i try to take on a heavy mec with a medium mec, my big array of close-ranged low-damage(but fast firing speed) weapons can't seem to scratch them either. damn. i think i need to go back to solaris to earn more money for heavier mecs for the whole team. and replace my cheapass pilots. i think my more recent philosophy of using weak pilots with weak mecs to use as baits, while i do all the real damage, won't work at elite difficult. at least not after the 1st couple of missions. maybe i should just just try to complete my recuit game already. romancing saga 3:
Flying Omelette The first time I played Metroid 2 it took me roughly 7.5 hours. I think that was the worst ending. The second playthrough it was about 2.5 and she had her armor off. I actually surprised myself the first time I got Metroid 2's best ending. That game seemed so huge and mazelike that I didn't think it would be possible for me to do it. But one time I was just playing the game without really trying and I got it. I guess I had memorized the game world enough from previous plays that I was able to cut out a lot of things. The game really isn't as big as it seems, it's just that some areas can be confusing to navigate due to how similar sections look, and thus it's easy to end up going in circles. I also noticed how quickly I acquired almost all of the game's items. There are also shortcuts and things you can skip (almost that whole middle section in the third from the last area that has nothing but one of each type of weapon can be skipped unless you wanted to change your weapon there.) There was a funny quirk when playing this on the Game Boy Player - the Game Boy Player attributes a blue hue to most of the background objects and red to the sprites. The Varia is hidden in a room with a bunch of identical spheres. It's not difficult to figure out it's in there even on a B&W Gameboy, but it was more obvious on the GBP because all the spheres were blue except the one with the Varia was red. I still have some fondness for it, but Metroid 2 is definitely not as good as Metroid or Super Metroid. It feels very simplified. Unless the game has more than 210 missiles, there is not a single tank or missile hidden in an unorthodox way (like within a wall portion that you have to shoot out) like there is in Metroid or Super Metroid. While you may have to acquire an item before you can fully explore the current area you're in (such as the bombs or spider ball), you never have to go back to explore earlier areas.
Crawl and 1OOO
CLOUDBOND007 I haven't learned potion making yet, that's the quest I'm working on right now. It seems like there's a lot of stuff you can make with the right ingredients. One of the things mentioned when selecting difficulty was the alchemy. For normal and high difficulty, it's basically required for survival. I don't know if it was a legitimate choice or not, maybe I'd have been forced through the same actions either way, but I was asked if I wanted to stay topside and help fight this giant boss creature or head into the laboratory and defend it from a mage and "the professor". I chose the later as a boss fight sounded boring in comparison. The professor shot and killed my helper, the character you know is going to be killed by something or someone from the second you meet him. All in all, things seem promising enough so far. I'm still working on Mario Galaxy but it's nice to have something to do when I'm going to be on the PC for a while.
CLOUDBOND007 I also cleared Dungeon 2 (Snake's Remains) in Oracle of Seasons. Now I'm going to imagine that Oracle of Seasons takes place in the future of Metal Gear Solid and you're exploring Snake's corpse looking for quest items.
INFPGamer Yeah, Metroid 2 isn't as nonlinear as it looks, until maybe the end of the game. Those pools of lava that you have to usually drain before you can continue makes the game more linear than the original. As for hidden missles I guess I could try gamefaqs or something. Is Sword of Mana any good compared to FFA?
CLOUDBOND007 http://cb007.com/manareview.html
TWEETER911 INFPGamer wrote: Is Sword of Mana any good compared to FFA? HA. HAHA. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAA YOU HAVE NO IDEA. HOW GOOD IT IS.
Crawl and 1OOO Tonight, I beat both the Vampire and [dark?] Slime bosses, so I'm at least as far as I've ever been. I also got a Spear Orb, taking that weapon to its highest level. And I've exited the Mana Fortress and saved, so I'll never need to redo this stuff. I also have gained a lot of levels. I was in the 50's earlier today; now, I'm around 67. That's also quite a bit higher, I believe, than I was when I accidentally reset.
Flying Omelette No, I did that. I accidentally hit the switch on the surge protector.
Crawl and 1OOO After that, I fought a couple of other ninjas, and they were kind of tough, too. So, I exited, and gained a couple of levels. I'm at level 72 or 73 now. That's it for tonight. I might gain a couple more levels the next time I play. And then maybe after that I'll try to beat the game.
TaroSH Once when I was playing with my two brothers, only one of us was still alive and a goblin with a boomerang across a pit in the dungeon you got Gnome Lodoss Warred him to death.
CLOUDBOND007 There are some stars now where you get a letter from Luigi and a snapshot of part of a level and you have to try to find and save Luigi and the star he's found. I got another Game Over earlier from this really tricky level. You're controlling Spring Mario and controlling might not be the best word, more like moving the analog stick and praying. I guess if you think ice levels are challenging for the wrong reasons than you probably wouldn't like this either, but I know I can beat it if I practice enough. Game Over in this game is asking you if you want to save and then throwing you to the title screen, so it's a fairly strong punishment compared to what they might have done. I'll write a review when I'm ready, but I'm ready to officially give this game my recommendation for what that's worth. I wouldn't want someone to go out and buy a Wii just to play it, but if you're getting the system, and you like Mario games even a little, at least rent this one.
CLOUDBOND007 It really ended on a high note, too. The last level was really exciting, but short enough that you don't lose interest before getting to Bowser. And while the Bowser battle had the same overall structure as your other encounters with him, everything was intensified a great deal and he had some tricky new attacks. I feel like there's just so much more to do, there are entire levels with multiple stars that I haven't even seen once yet. The more I play this game, the more I like it. After many years of mostly mediocre games, this one really shines bright, even more so when you consider that it's the latest in a long running series. I hope that kids playing Galaxy today feel some of what we felt playing SMB1 and SMB3. It certainly captures the spirit of those games, and more than a little of the gameplay intensity. And I hope that there will be more Nintendo sequels like this one instead of garbage like Wind Waker.
Brigade Delbrack I beat Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube. Awesome game!
CLOUDBOND007
Crawl and 1OOO I beat Secret of Mana. It was okay. I wouldn't recommend it to Facility Pro, though. If I had to guess, I'd suppose he'd hate it. Anyway, the story really wasn't flushed out enough. When we watched the ending, and the Sand Ship appeared during the credits, FO said that it was weird that that didn't have more to do with the plot. I said a lot of the game's plot isn't fleshed out. Like ... why did the Sprite use up his mana during the final fight? What IS the Sprite? The boy actually is from the Mana tribe, meaning he is kind of a magical creature (his mother turned into the Mana tree). But he didn't use up his mana? He's not from a mana world? What is the difference between whatever the sprite is and the Mana tribe? I also have to wonder about whether the Flammie had anything to do with the Mana Beast, but I can accept that as something that's purposefully vague. I can accept that because the vagueness has an emotional effect, so it seems like it was done intentionally.
Flying Omelette
TaroSH I rented and watched the new Transformers movie. The fact I'm not a huge Transformers fan is probably the only thing that kept me from being all-out offended by the movie, but it was still pretty bad. The best parts were easily the parts that actually involved the Transformers, and even then there's some pretty bad stuff here, like when all the Autobots appear, Prime introduces them, and they each give off some shitty catchprase like "You feelin' lucky... PUNK?!" and Jazz (I think) break dances, and when the Transformers are "sneaking" around the guy's yard, Prime steps on the fountain, and goes "Oops, mai bahd". There's a scene where the main guy's parents were talking to him about masturbation, Bumblebee pees on somebody just like in that script Crawl posted a long time ago, and the very end has the guy and girl making out on top of Bumblebee rather than in him. http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=241
Also, every time a fight broke out, I thought of the third panel of this comic. http://fanboys-online.com/minis/20070712.jpg
Because the Transformers themselves are so generic and spindly, I couldn't tell who was fighting who at the BIG CLIMACTIC BATTLE!!! at the end of the movie and I was half expecting one of them to go "Woah, I'm on your side!" And some plane Decepticon comes out of nowhere, and vanishes just as quickly. He's not even killed, he just vanishes. Also, that backhoe guy got killed off so quickly he may as well not have been in the movie at all. But of course, the average movie goer is going to look at that and go "OOOH! SHIT BREAKING AND FLYING! NEAT!" There was also one embarassingly hilarious moment where the girlfriend is driving a tow truck with a handicapped Bumblebee in tow, then she stops the truck, starts bawling (silently) and puts her forehead on the steering wheel as some sad-like music and it cuts to some marines fighting one of the Decepticons, then it goes back to her, she puts on a "let's kick some ASS!" face, kicks it in gear, gases it, and some hard rock stuff starts playing while she goes peeling down the street with Bumblebee blasting randomly. And then there's this annoying Decepticon that I read was supposed to be Soundwave but they renamed him "Frenzy" that skitters around, making noises you'd expect from a Star Wars alien, then is anticlimactically defeated by it beheading itself. Scorponok amount to jack shit, as he appears in some shootout, gets carpet bombed, then goes underground flinging his tail off along the way and is never seen again.
CLOUDBOND007
SWEETBEEjr How long until you get to play as Luigi?
CLOUDBOND007
da dick I beat Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube. Awesome game! really? i read it's even more boring than the previous tales. mechwarrior 4: mercs completed the last davion(feds)-aligned mission with my recuit-level game. much easier than i thought. even more easier when i replayed it the second time with 3 altas mecs and 1 daishi(actually i prefer calling dai shit since it's too madly slow for anything other than long-range support fire). after spending money on the extra altases and 1 daishite, i still have over 100 million credits. the later mission pay very very well. the last davion mission was some raid on a palace. 1st objective, take out some enemy mecs, with some fairly powerful victor mecs backing me up. easy. 2nd objective, take out enemy hangar. that was tricky during my 1st run through, as i was mostly equiped with short-ranged weapons, and the enemy aircraft were the fastest enemies in the game. 3rd objective, escort the prince peter(destroy more mecs on the way) into the palace grounds. he didn't really need my protection as he was piloting a powerful fafnir(sp?) mec, and hanging out with 2 victor bodyguard mecs. fafnir is probably even more powerful(but only slightly faster than the daishit) than the atlas. not 100% sure since i can't buy it with my gray death sponsor. it does carry 2 heavy gauss rifles. i think it's the only mec which can carry 2 of those. after the enemy mecs near peter are gone, some general shows up and the final objective is to kill him. the general uses a hauptmann. powerful weapons but like the 4 daishits which guard him, he's slow. me and the victor mecs ran circles around him and blew him a new hole before the prince peter got a piece of him. after that it's some short dialogue with the prince demanding the surrender of remaining lyran forces, and finally the cutscene, which is an mpeg video i already viewed from the game's resource folder. media said the prince dealt the finishing blow on the general, my company got some cushy job guarding the new administration, and some hint on the upcoming word of blake jihad event within the battletech storyline. i guess the 5th mechwarrior(if fasa wants to make another) would be about the jihad. maybe one of the reasons it's still not made, is because the plot resembles the "war on terror" too much. well, perhaps a more right-wing version of the war on terror. according to an faq and the mpeg videos i watched, siding with the lyrans(steiner alignment) won't make them win the war. instead i get to choose to take on another neutral mission and take over an entire planet, or betray archon katarine(sp?) steiner to wolf clan and join wolf clan. that's kinda lame. this game is trying too hard to stick to the canon story. and ... noticed that all other missions, including the solaris arenas, get closed off once the last mission is available. too bad. i really wanted try doing the solaris grand championship before getting on with my elite-level game. annoying that i can't save during a mission. actually, there is no save game option anywhere. the game automatically creates savepoints each time i complete a mission or jump to another planet. rather convenient.
CLOUDBOND007 really? i read it's even more boring than the previous tales. Best one I've played so far.
TaroSH Bumblebee is mute for most of the movie. According to Optimus, his "vocal mechanics" were damaged in battle, and they're still trying to fix them. He talks by playing related crap on his radio (for example, when the kid asks where they came from, he switches to a prayer program saying something about "coming from high heaven"). But at the end of the movie, he magically gets his voice back, which is especially stupid because the rest of him is pretty much in pieces. Ratchet and Bumblebee was the worst case of looking the same. They look identical transformed (yellow plates all over random silver crap), so when Bumblebee got his legs smashed at the end (which is why that girl was towing him) and there was this yellow robot running and jumping and blasting, I always instinctively went "Huh? Why's Bumblebee got his legs back??" at first, then finally realized it was Ratchet. When the male said "There's more than meets the eye to you" to the female it was so fucking cheesy and forced, and when he went "What a stupid line that was" I went "No kidding!" Of course, I'm sure a lot of idiots gobbled it up. Oh yeah, and one scene implies Bumblebee also farts. The boy fires up the car and it lets out a cloud of smoke that turns practically the entire screen brown for a second. I guess for decent scenes, the one where Bumblebee was getting harpooned, pinned to the ground, and blasted with liquid nitrogen was mildly affecting. Might have been more affecting had Bumblebee been given more of a personality than "pissing mute robot" and the kid going "NOOOOO!!!!1 STOOOOOOP!!!!ONE" been more likeable and a less whiny actor. And I guess the scene where Bumblebee is driving the boy and girl home, then the girl asks "If he's some super advanced robot from another planet, why does he turn into this piece of shit?", then Bumblebee kicks them out was kind of cute.
Crawl and 1OOO When the male said "There's more than meets the eye to you" to the female it was so fucking cheesy and forced, and when he went "What a stupid line that was" I went "No kidding!" Of course, I'm sure a lot of idiots gobbled it up. That line was also in the dreamwave comics. It was not, however, in the Transformers episodes, as far as I can remember (okay, ignoring the theme song). So, not only is it dumb, it's lazy and not much of a reference.
TaroSH What I saw was probably even worse than Transformers, though. Mary Jane is a slut, the Peter and MJ watching something (fireflies I think?) at the beginning and they go to kiss JUST BARELY missing the meteor with Venom in it was hilarious, the guy who plays Sandman screams and looks like he's passing a kidney stone all the time, and the fight between Peter and Harry at the beginning was like a Transformers fight scene at night. And the crap with Harry all "YOU KILLED MY FATHER AND I WON'T LISTEN TO YOU AND I'M GOING TO KILL YOU SO SHUT UP!" is so forced and cheesy. Of course, the second movie was pretty lame, so what was I expecting?
CLOUDBOND007 Mario update: 78 Stars.
James FP
TaroSH One thing I forgot to mention was the humor is okay. The "I want Spiderman exposed as the madman criminal he is! Bring me a photograph of Spiderman with his hand in a cookie jar!" remark was funny, at least.
Crawl and 1OOO
SWEETBEEjr One thing I forgot to mention was the humor is okay. The "I want Spiderman exposed as the madman criminal he is! Bring me a photograph of Spiderman with his hand in a cookie jar!" remark was funny, at least. J. Jonah Jameson is the best part about anything having to do with Spider-Man.
TWEETER911 Best one I've played so far. ...more like the ONLY one you've played!
CLOUDBOND007
TWEETER911 Didn't I tell you to play Abyss?
CLOUDBOND007
TWEETER911 I know where you live I could...force you to play it! >_>
CLOUDBOND007 It's too cold for you here, you'd never survive the trip. Tweeters can die from just a slight bit of cold air blowing on them. They be fragile birds.
TWEETER911 Still, the trip to Newfoundland would take too long, so smeg it.
In actual vidyagaem stuff, made it to Stage 14 in Advance Wawrs Day of Ruin. A few maps have given me some trouble after I mis-step. I have a feeling 14 is going to be hard though, because the badguy for this stage looks like Revolver Ocelot. TaroSH Was it better than Transformers? Ever so slightly, if at all. At least the final fight scene was comprehendable. Toby Maguire always had the stupidest grin on his face, and Thomas Hayden Church looked like he was constantly trying to push his skull out of his forehead. I will say the scene with Peter Parker getting high off Venom managed to be even more painful to watch than the Transformers sneaking around the Even Stevens kid's lawn while his parents talked to him about masturbation. The soundtrack was retarded at times. Like, when Sandman is still getting used to being made of sand, his neck is cricking around, and something like Gogo's Theme was playing. There was one other moment when the soundtrack made me laugh out loud, I think it was at the beginning of the final battle when the giant Sandman was forming. A lot of crap seems to happen just because the script said so, like Sandman's 'confession time', and Harry "dies", like, three times throughout the movie, and Sandman twice (plus his creation). And what happened with the crane scene? It's like, Spiderman saves the girl, he takes off, and the crane itself is never dealt with.
CLOUDBOND007 I'm curious to compare the difficulty of Sunshine to this one again. I think that the linear sections of Sunshine were pretty tough in a fair way but my memory is foggier on the rest. I remember losing lots of lives in particular spots but feeling like I was losing because I was fighting the controls or the camera. I decided to watch some Youtube videos of Sunshine and it makes me feel even more strongly that greater linearity was the best way to go for Galaxy.
TaroSH Mary Jane isn't just a slut, she's a jealous slut. Her reasons for being pissy with Peter amount to (A) he's Spiderman, and he gets more attention that she does, and (B) he kissed the girl he rescued from the fall. She calls up Harry and comes over to his mansion, and they dance, and they kiss, then suddenly she storms off, leaving me asking "...did I miss something? Was a scene cut out here?" The guy who eventually becomes Venom was some photographer punk I kept wanting to call "Jimmy Olsen" who wants Peter dead because Peter called him out on doctoring a photo of black Spiderman stealing some moneybags, which is actually a recolor of a photograph taken when red-and-blue Spidey recovered some moneybags from Sandman. Why did he doctor that photo of Spiderman stealing the money? Because they needed somebody to become Venom. Oh yes, and FO's favorite cliche: Harry gets amnesia when he hits his head!
TWEETER911 TaroSH wrote: ......
CLOUDBOND007 Edit: Updating for star #86. I finished a couple more of the purple coin missions among other things.
CLOUDBOND007 And up to 89 stars. Edit: I put some more time into The Witcher. It's not totally nonlinear like Morrowind or something, but you do have a lot of freedom to do whatever quests you like in whatever order you like, throughout the part of the world you're confined to at the time. I haven't done anything too important yet. Killing some creatures, lighting some ceremonial fires at shrines, annoyingly difficult escort mission that ends in sex. Geralt has sex with everything in this game. It's a pretty good game but I wish it ran a little less slide-showy on my PC. UPS says Phoenix Wright 3 is coming today. I'm psyched up for a marathon session of that. Playing those games is like reading a novel to me, I can just go at them for hours at a time, when normally my gaming sessions are pretty short.
sethrashnoo
Flying Omelette James FP wrote: I beat Pocky & Rocky on Easy. I've only made it as far as the Graveyard stage on Normal. DH and I also played Easy together and I noticed a significant Going back to this for a moment....I played a little of that game a few nights ago and that's the impression it's always left on me, too. I think maybe part of it is that you're supposed to learn when to use your projectiles and when to use the close-range attack. Enemies tend to swarm you so quickly that there's no way to get them with projectiles, but if you use the close-range attack, you'll find that sometimes they can be swatted away. The problem is that it seems like every time you want to attack something, you have to come to a dead stop. This not only slows down the pacing of the game but it makes dodging very cumbersome. I may have mentioned this earlier, so slap me if I did and forgot, but I've seen P&R compared to Legend of the Mystical Ninja a lot because of the similar theme and settings. But as far as gameplay goes, they really aren't that much alike. P&R does not have any platforming (you don't even have a jump button). LotMN would only be like P&R if every stage was exactly like that one bridge with the giant octopus that you cross in that town that has no true action stage.
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH Apollo looks retarded. The character, not the game: WTF at the entire cast? Is this supposed to be Phoenix Wright for kids? Are the trials about stealing lunch money instead of murders?
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH I think so. I'd ask what happened to Phoenix and why he's a bum playing a piano or whatever he does here, but that's probably answered in PW3. Anyway, I read a graphic novel by Douglas TenNapel (guy who created Earthworm Jim) called "Gear". It feels like a freewrite exercise. Nothing's really fleshed out, and everything moves too quickly. Well, there's a letter from Doug in the back, which says this was something he made when playing around with a sumi brush eight years ago. It's not offensive, and maybe had a little more care been put into it it could have been good. One thing worth noting about this book is it spawned the Catscratch cartoon, although the only thing that survived the transition is the cat characters.
CLOUDBOND007 I have only the vaguest idea why he's no longer a lawyer, based on message board gossip, but I don't want to spoil it. I do know that he appears in court to help Apollo like Mia helps Phoenix in the other games. And that you may be able to play him in a flashback.
TaroSH Am I the only person here who hated this movie? http://flyingomelettespalace.yuku.com/topic/7936 I thought it was worse than either Spiderman 3 or Transformers. Maybe I'll change my mind when I let my thoughts settle, but for now... The family forgiveness and understanding thing was offset by the "The goverment is corrupt, stupid, incompetent, and EEEEEVIL" submessage that's constantly getting hammered into your head. I didn't laugh a whole lot. The vision scene with the trees slapping and punching him when he made a "wrong" epiphany was funny. What happened to the radioactive lake? Or even the pig? Did I miss something, or did the writers just have the worst case of amnesia after Pirates of the Caribbean 3?
TWEETER911
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007 In one of the "slightly alternate endings", Spider Pig is helping with the rebuilding, too. He got left behind in Springfield after the Simpsons escaped and I guess they didn't feel like mentioning him again. I don't remember what the situation with the lake was at the end, but I'd assume it'd be cleaned up when they rebuilt the rest of the town.
CLOUDBOND007 I'm not really loving the game yet, but I think it has the potential to get better. Godot is the best new character. Definitely better than Franziska so far. I hope Edgeworth makes an appearance soon, though.
Captain Ladd Spencer I started another TenNapel graphic novel called Earthboy Jacobus. If by some cosmic chance I ran into TenNapel and he asked me for advice, I would tell him to slow down. I admire the man is trying to make each panel different and exciting (unlike, say, VG Cats, or just about every other webcomic) http://www.vgcats.com/comics/images/070802.jpg , but the result is comics that just move too fast. The setup of this book is some marine-turned-cop is retiring, and on the way home he hits a flying whale with his car. Inside the whale's mouth is this boy from an alternate dimension who's being chased by some evil monsters from that dimension. But he hits the flying whale on, like, the fourth or fifth page of the book, and we's already got a fight with a bad guy on the eighth. Most pages can be read in ten to fifteen seconds. There's not much characterization for the officer, or the boy, or the officer's mentor, or anything.
Crawl and 1OOO I started Metroid 2. I got the first couple of earthquakes (the first one requires killing just one metroid mutant; the other, four -- the next will require eight), I got an energy tank, several missiles, the ice beam, and the spider ball. I died when fighting a miniboss. It was a powerup ball, but it turned into this shelled creature that seems to only take damage from bombs.
CLOUDBOND007 I've heard that there are five cases in this game, which would probably make it the longest PW game by a good margin based on what I've seen so far.
Crawl and 1OOO I beat more than half of the metroids that you're supposed to beat at the beginning of the game: 39 -- I have 18 left now. I saw FO play this game, so I know that near the very end, a few more Metroids are laid (or hatched). I have to beat two more in this area. I have three energy tanks, 160 missiles. I've found the ice beam, the spazer, and the plasma beam, but, unlike Super Metroid, you can only keep one beam at a time. I found the Space Jump, but, oddly, missed the high jump. Oh, well... At least this game is keeping my interest.
TWEETER911 When it comes out on DVD and Co-Dee rents it.....if you don't like it....
TaroSH I rented Shrek 3. It was okay, easily the best of the four 2007 movies I've seen in the past week. Yes, the gangsta talk scene was painful, and the scene with Arthur bawling at Merlin's feet was also annoying, but most of the other jokes were funny, although the beginning had me doubting. At the beginning Shrek is filling in the role of king, and in one scene he's getting ready to knight somebody, and you know he's going to slash the guy, which is exactly what he does. But in the next scene he's about to christen a ship, accidently pushes it off, then throws the bottle at it. It smashes a hole in the ship, and the ship goes up in flames and explodes. It was so ridiculous I couldn't help but laugh. The scene at the end with Arthur going "If there's something you want to do, or someone you really want to be, then the only one standing in your way... is you!" as he faces this dwarf guy who then goes "Me?!", and everyone around yells "GET HIM!" was also funny. The baby ogres aren't in this movie as much as the hype made it seem, which was a relief. Shrek has a nightmare about them, then the final three minutes are the babies messing up the house which I could have done without, but that's it. Most of the movie is about a coup by Prince Charming and Shrek getting King Arthur to Far Far Away so he can become king. Is Prince Charming supposed to be Arthur's father? They look identical. Maybe there was supposed to be a "big reveal", but they omitted it because it's kind of a duh. Or else the character designers were just lazy.
Crawl and 1OOO One problem with this game is that the areas aren't very distinct. It's not like even Metroid 1, with Norfair, Brinstar, Kraid's lair, etc. It's just ... caves, caves, caves, caves, caves, caves, caves. I've heard complaints that it's hard to know where you are in Simon's Quest because it's just Forest, Town, Mansion, River. I don't really agree with that in Simon's Quest. For one thing, even those things are more than cave, cave, cave. Number 2, there are also wastelands, that weird water dungeon, caverns, cemeteries ... and the layouts, even for similar settings, are different enough to orient you. In Metroid 2, not only is the lack of distinction a problem in and of itself, for obvious reasons, it also makes it easy to go in circles.
Crawl and 1OOO You know, the story to this game is kind of messed up. Basically, Samus is the villain. She's invading these creatures' homeworld and killing them where they live, intended to hunt them to extinction. This is about as far from environmentalism as you can get. I think Metroid Fusion is kind of a retcon of this game, because that game, as I recall, took place in a space station that simulated the different environments of the Metroids' home world. There were all kinds of different environments -- I don't remember them very well, but it was probably basic stuff like jungle, lava, rock. This game, though, depicts the Metroid's home world as all cave.
CLOUDBOND007 Godot doesn't really have any depth to him so far. Every trial, it's the same coffee jokes. He has no real personality except that he seems a little less hostile than Edgeworth or the Von Karmas could be.
Flying Omelette Crawl and 1OOO wrote: I think Metroid Fusion is kind of a retcon of this game, because that game, as I recall, took place in a space station that simulated the different environments of the Metroids' home world. There were all kinds of different environments -- I don't remember them very well, but it was probably basic stuff like jungle, lava, rock. This game, though, depicts the Metroid's home world as all cave. I wonder, though, if that's the result of the Game Boy's limitations. The area with the thorny plants all over the floors and walls seems like it could be suggested as a "jungle" area. And there's one area that seems like it could possibly be an "ice" area (the area with the large icicle-like spikes on the floors and ceilings). The next-to-last area is a glass bubble Norfair like area, and there are some weirder things like sandy areas (desert?) and those rooms with the webbing all over them. But if you put too much detail in the backgrounds of old Game Boy games, they become cluttered, blurry, and difficult to make your character out (I've heard that was a huge problem with Donkey Kong Land.)
Crawl and 1OOO So, it's not like it seems to me that there's a "sandy area" in the game. Rather, it's more like, Okay, the whole game is cave ... and here's a cave room that just so happens to have sand in it.
Crawl and 1OOO The first time I made it to that area, I missed ice beam, which raised the question of what would happen if I didn't kill the normal metroids. FO said she didn't know what would happen; she never did that before. It wasn't tricky to get past the metroids, but when you reach the room with the spikes, no music is playing. And when you enter the room that's supposed to have the Queen Metroid, she isn't there. There is a path out (which you can take even if you're fighting her), which leads directly to the ice beam.
da dick bla bla... have sex with everything 'cause he's suppose to be a sterile , morally ambiggguous(sp?) bounty hunter? === the weapon stealing jackal is said to be spotted around the tropical ake kidnapping children, but at the same place, he's also said to be in regular contact with the church people back in piduro(sp?). realise certain quests will only open up if i have an empty slot in my party(maximum 6). but i don't feel like kicking anyone out just to do some of those quest. walking around certain towns while with an empty slot will force me recruit the crazy girly girl who keeps changing her name. her real name should be tatanya. her stats are pretty good, but she starts with no JP/TP, (usually) no skills or techs, and she rarely levels up her skills and learn new techs. fairly useless. i filled with her slot with the overpowered robin, who looks like a cross between zorro and batman. had to check an walkthrough after getting stuck in the offering cave. think the game wanted me to fight the rats and examine the blocked entrance twice before nina would help open the cave for me to escape and find some rat poison. it's possible to defeat the rats without posion by targeting alergnon(sp?) the super rat, who's hiding among the 6 groups of rats, but that would require lots of luck or group-attacking techs/spells on all my characters. finally went through the intro part of monica's quest. there seems to be many ways it could end. if i escape godwin's cave without meeting godwin, i miss out on some lovey dovey dialogue(with the poet butting in) between julian and monica(only if julian's in the party). but if i don't fight the monster guarding the exit, julian will not re-join my party, and according to the char faq, he will just disappear forever from monica's quest. after that, there's a choice of escaping the castle with julian, thus starting the main(open-ended) part of the quest, or accepting the marriage to the son of duke zweig and ending up shipwrecked. if i choose the shipwreck, i get to fight through more monsters(more chance to train up the weak monica), and yet again i can avoid letting julian rejoin(but beating the ship's boss will be hard). even if i let julian join, he will still disappear, after they jump off the ship like titanic. strangely, the charfaq, which contains ending spoliers, said i would still get a "good" ending(together with julian) if i go along with the shipwreck scenario. so i guess the shipwreck's the canon plot, at least for monica's quest. same thing for julian's quest, but i think if julian recruits ellen in his quest, he instead ends up with ellen and sara. not sure if the shipwreck overwrites the ellen ending. i chose to escape since i already spent some time training up julian and he's suppose to learn tech quickly. after that went around recruiting most of the shinon/main heroes except the crappy sara. then when tatatnya joined, i purposely got her killed in the devil king's palace, for thomas' rescue gon quest. no more pestering girly girl. don't feel like killing her in in sara and kat's quest since i bothered to train her up a bit. i originally thought i could only get rid of her after complting some quest related to her in librof, but she just leaves when i try to enter librof. think the faq suggested that thomas is somehow able to do tatatnya quest so she would enter librof without leaving.
Captain Ladd Spencer I finished that Earthboy Jacobus book, which had one of the fucking worst endings since Killer7. Speaking of Killer7, it becomes painfully clear in the last third of the book that Jacobus is a Jesus figure. I never would have guessed except TenNapel said so in the ending letter, but Gear in that Gear book was also a Jesus figure. If I ever find out Earthworm Jim, Klaymen, and Wex Major were also supposed to be Jesus figures, I will SCREAM. Then I finally beat Gargoyle's Quest. The final boss was a puss. I beat him on my second try, and on that second try I didn't even get hit. I'm also a little surprised at how short that game was.
Crawl and 1OOO I beat Metroid 2. I died a couple of times against the boss. It took me some luck to figure out what it's pattern was -- after I figured that out, I exploited it without too much trouble: First, what I did was jump really high to get over the three fired shots -- I didn't want to screw attack them, because that would have me facing the wrong way for the counterattack -- then do a shallow jump to avoid its head thrust. Then I'd shoot at it when it did its second head thrust. If the timing was right, that should hit it in its mouth and pause it, allowing me to rapid fire missiles at it. After a while, its pattern changed subtly -- it moved faster, and seemed more likely to open its mouth on the first thrust. I adjusted to that, but I don't know exactly how. Final time: 8:06. That got me the worst ending. It's sort of weird -- in some ways, I think this was a better game than Secret of Mana (and it held my interest more), though Secret of Mana kind of seems like it has more to it. Well, SoM *IS* longer; that's a fact. They're not very comparable games. Other random observations: This game's main theme is okay -- not one of my favorite game songs, but kind of groovy. Much of the rest of the music isn't so good. One song is really goofy and almost embarrassing. I mentioned that the game's setting is pretty much just "cave". Another thing it's missing is variety in the bosses. They're all Metroids. Metroid 1 didn't have much for bosses, but I still think Kraid and Ridley were a little more memorable. And the Omega Metroids, once again, seemed like battles of attrition.
Flying Omelette TaroSH wrote: I rented the Simpsons Movie. Am I the only person here who hated this movie? I thought it was worse than either Spiderman 3 or Transformers. Maybe I'll change my mind when I let my thoughts settle, but for now... The family forgiveness and understanding thing was offset by the "The goverment is corrupt, stupid, incompetent, and EEEEEVIL" submessage that's constantly getting hammered into your head. Well, at least it's established as a comedy, which makes it open to parody and exaggeration. Unlike, oh say, that Terminator TV series that constantly beats over your head how evil technology and scientists are. What happened to the radioactive lake? Or even the pig? Did I miss something, or did the writers just have the worst case of amnesia after Pirates of the Caribbean 3? What CB007 said. Also, I'm pretty sure the ending showed everyone rebuilding Springfield and one can assume the lake will be cleaned up in that process. This and this have got to be the worst cases of Plot Alzheimer's I've ever seen. http://tenchionline.com/ragey/Cartoons/CaptainN-BaseballKnowItAlls/page.htm http://tenchionline.com/ragey/Cartoons/CaptainN-TotallyTetrisized/page.htm
So, okay, I haven't actually seen these episodes, I'm just going by the reviews, but in the first one (the baseball one), it looks like they make a huge deal out of whether they should go left or right at a fork in the tunnel. Of course, logical progresson dictates the team will split up and go both ways. So who was right, who was wrong? What was the point of all of that? It looks to me like there was none. They just meet up at the other end. In the second one (the Tetris one), there's some random guy I don't know with a magic ring who gets turned into a block. Lana's magic tiara and the guy's magic ring combine their powers to return him from a block to a normal person. So, okay, then...why don't they use that power to restore Simon? Probably because of the Captain N rule that if something displays a great power, it can do it only once. Otherwise, why didn't the fist-shaped computer (was it ever even explained what that thing even was?) only bring ONE person to Videoland? Why couldn't it bring a whole army of gamers to fight Mother Brain? And doesn't it make about as much sense that Kevin could be a hero IRL from playing games as it would if went on to win the Super Bowl after playing several hours of 10 Yard Fight? It's sort of weird -- in some ways, I think this was a better game than Secret of Mana (and it held my interest more), though Secret of Mana kind of seems like it has more to it. Well, SoM *IS* longer; that's a fact. They're not very comparable games. Other random observations: This game's main theme is okay -- not one of my favorite game songs, but kind of groovy. Much of the rest of the music isn't so good. One song is really goofy and almost embarrassing. I mentioned that the game's setting is pretty much just "cave". Another thing it's missing is variety in the bosses. They're all Metroids. Metroid 1 didn't have much for bosses, but I still think Kraid and Ridley were a little more memorable. And the Omega Metroids, once again, seemed like battles of attrition. Yeah, as I said, I still have some fondness for Metroid 2, but it just feels like it's missing something. I think the atmosphere worked a lot better on me the first time I played it and it worked better on the original Game Boy. Not that I can really even recommend playing it that way, but when it's darker and on a smaller screen, there's more of a feeling of claustrophobia, like you can't see 10 feet in front of you, and it's scarier when a Metroid leaps out of nowhere. Also, some things just seemed more eerie, like that room with the lantern creatures that appear and disappear and that Chozo statue in the last area with the head lopped off. You know, the story to this game is kind of messed up. Basically, Samus is the villain. She's invading these creatures' homeworld and killing them where they live, intended to hunt them to extinction. This is about as far from environmentalism as you can get. Maybe that's the reason they ended the game the way they did...so Samus wouldn't seem completely cold. On the other hand, it can also be seen as retribution as the Metroids did wipe out the very civilization that created them.
TWEETER911 Played Ray in a Wifi match yesterday, and I was about to win (strong defense>>>zerg rush), but my wifi konked out. Oh well.
Crawl and 1OOO
CLOUDBOND007
TWEETER911 CLOUDBOND007 wrote: I predict you won't like it. I second this statement.
CLOUDBOND007 I've heard this was the best PW game, but I'm not feeling it. There are some things that really annoy me. Mainly how so many of the cases are related... from what I've seen, 1, 4, and 5 are all directly tied together with the same main villain. That gets old REAL quick especially when the villain just isn't that interesting and is obvious from the start. The two "random" cases, while not the best the series has to offer, are at least fun to unravel a little at a time. With case #5, I feel like I know who the villain is, and I'm just waiting for the crime to happen so I can get on with the trial. Any the trials are a little too difficult for my liking. You have HUGE stretches where you don't get any health restored and some of the pieces of evidence the game wants you to present seem almost impossible to figure out without knowing the whole story in advance. And as always, there are pieces of evidence you could submit that legitimately work but aren't flagged as correct, or you can present the right thing but tie it to the wrong witness statement. This is all true of the other PW games, but it seems much more prevalent here. Got to see some of Godot's past before the visor thing and before he was a complete coffee maniac, which was sort of interesting, but didn't explain much. And the prequel case I just finished had Edgeworth as your opponent, but even he didn't seem as interesting as usual. I'm not so worried about whether Apollo Justice is going to be good anymore. I'll play it eventually, but I think I'm getting bored with the series.
TWEETER911
Flying Omelette I second this statement. I'm not expecting it will become one of his favorite games, but I would be really surprised if he flat out disliked or hated it. I think at the worst he'd feel it's only okay. At the best, he'd think it's a good game. That's why I suggested it because I'm curious to know. If I had to take my best guess, I think he'll rank it somewhere between EarthBound and The Magic of Scheherazade, he might like it more than Secret of Mana, but he won't like it as much as he did Might & Magic. It's gotta be at least better than Breath of Fire 3, which he did finish. And I don't think he'd like Breath of Fire 2 more for the reasons people usually give for liking it more than BoF1. That's one of the problems I think with so many people saying BoF2 is the best one in the series - some people will play it first, will be underwhelmed by it, and then won't give the first one a chance because they hear it's "not as good" or "worse" or whatever.
Crawl and 1OOO
TaroSH TWEETER911 wrote: "Apollo" kinda sucks from what I hear from the grapevine. The game or the character?
Crawl and 1OOO Anyway, FO found Breath of Fire for me (and a good thing, too, because I somehow overlooked it). I spent a little bit of time leveling up. The first time I visited the nearby castle / dungeon, I died, because I hadn't bought any healing items, and was poisoned. On my next trip, I realized I still probably did not need to die, because that area has fountains that completely heal you. Oh, well. I skipped the sword in the first town, but saved enough to buy the best armor. Even that was probably unnecessary. The dungeon has pretty good armor, and the enemies there give much more experience and gold than those in the overworld. When I beat the boss, I gained two levels. I saved at the town you have to "Metal Gear Solid" through.
Crawl and 1OOO The boss battle was pretty close. He only took very little damage from my attacks, and I was running out of curing items by the end (I had either 1 herb, or zero, and also a more powerful cure item) After that, I went to Winlan. I started playing as Nina, and saved for the night. It's probably too early for opinions, but damn if this game isn't very NES-like. The graphics are obviously grid based. When you're at the top of Winland, the sky is solid blue (contrast that with Secret of Mana, which had parallax in the Loft Mountain). And the encounter rate is high. You also play as one character for a while, which is not necessarily NES-like, but might be reminiscent of the first couple of Dragon Warriors (and Earthbound, for that matter)
CLOUDBOND007
Psycho Penguin I'm three hours into Arc the Lad. Really liking it so far. In FF3 for DS, I'm about to face ****ing Garuda. Ugh.
Kairobi King
Crawl and 1OOO Anyway, I made it to the wizard and couldn't damage it at all. I just kept fighting, and it turned out that it's one of those fights where you can't win. I took control of Ryu, who will have to rescue Nina, and saved and quit. My eyes are getting fatigued, though I guess it's late enough that I should have quit in any case.
CLOUDBOND007 Anyway, I was reading some Apollo Justice spoilers, which I'm assuming to be real because I've seen the same thing several times on different sites. If you want to see what apparently happens with Phoenix, highlight to read, it's kind of depressing. He supposedly uses fabricated evidence during a case and gets himself disbarred a couple months after the end of the 3rd game. I guess he was tricked into presenting the evidence, but whatever the case, I guess he's now a gambler/piano player that can play one song. So they kind of ruined his life for this new game. Oh, and here's some goofy Youtube thing I stumbled upon (slightly NSFW): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofo6_Rp_e44&feature=related" TARGET="_blank"
da dick made it to a wizard's tower. It was a little confusing at first, because it has several floors and stairs between the floors, and it seemed like I was going in circles. What it turns out you have to do, though, is fall through the correct one-way hole. I missed that because I first fell through the wrong one, which sends you back to the beginning of the tower...
well crap, that sounds exactly like the witch's tower in BOF2, except it's a witch's not wizard's. romancing saga 3: in katarine's quest, i killed gwanye the dragon just for the heck of it. i think i got 10000 creds for that. according to the endings spoiler, i was only suppose to try to kill him after he destroys the small village. the dragon was suppose to be the ex-pet of the holy king. whatever. gwayne was probably the toughest battle i fought since the lich(it keeps summoning progressively more powerful cronies to surround it) in dead men's well. i could only beat him in commander mode where my team(robin:epee/wind & sun magic, harid:sword, poet:mace/fighting(kung fu), ellen:fighting, thomas:spear/water & moon magic) auto-regens each round, and i get to access all my healing stuff in my inventory. used up all my healing items for that battle. killed some fishy murderers in an inn ambush in vanguard. found out there were soliders of the demon forneus(sp?) or whoever he is. for some reason, the heroes and the mayor think the best way beat those fishies is to make the town move, 'cause that was what the holy king built the town for. fighting fishy demons with a moving(maybe flying too?) town powered by a dolphin statue? no, don't get it. anyways, i have to go find that dolphin statue which should be in black's hidden treasure place. had to kick out thomas so i could use herman to lead me to the treasure. herman's secret identity is black. according to character faq, he learns axe techs better than ellen and he starts with high skill in wind magic like robin, but he only gets decent stats after defeating forneus and regaining his youth. don't think i need another wind magic user and my ellen is already quite powerful with an 8WP cost fighting tech. don't wanna spend money researching/buying a better axe for him either. maybe i'll replace poet with this guy once i manage to close an abyss gate. poet is already quite powerful with group-attacking earthquake mace tech,but his HP isn't increasing as fast as ellen, mace techs(and weapons) seem to be the weakest of all weapons, mace attacks seem to be only super-effective against undead, and he doesn't start with magic and high JP like herman/black and robin. buying magic and spending time training up (in magic) for someone who doesn't start with any magic is tedious and expensive as hell. already spent thousands on thomas' magic spells, and poet's intel is only 13. since RS3 have separate slots for physical techs and magic spells(unlike saga frontier), any character who trains in both magic and whatever weapon skill should be even more powerful(or at least more durable) than a saga frontier character(also trained in techs/magics). poet refuses to leave (probably)because he doesn't have enough inspiration(closing an abyss gate) to write another song. char faq said i could hear/read a new song from him about me once i kick him out after closing a gate. the easiest abyss gate should be the one i visited at devil king's palace. i think one of the boss enemies i tried to fight holds the key. could not beat it the last time i was there. don't think i should try it again until i have around 400 or 500 HP for most of my team. there's another event which popped up after i killed gwanye and entered zweig. some black car runs me over every time i visit that town. the event says "kill dragon machine"(guess that's the car). maybe the crazy dancing professor who lives in the woods west of zweig has something to do with this. |
