Video Games

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 12:15 am

ckafrica wrote:I did like Fable 1 for computer. The fact that you could run a brothel and be a polygamist made up for the fact it was super easy to cheat in the game to max out on all experience quickly.

Anyone play the second? (I remember hearing it was coming out a while back)

yes, those are great aspects... but how do you cheat the system?

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 12:58 am

PhoneLobster wrote: If you liked Apocalypse with the Real Time battles, well I preferred the originals,

The originals were great games, don't get me wrong. But they just had a few problems that apocalypse fixed, mostly relating to inventory management, and also making the geoscape (which became the cityscape) a lot more entertaining. You got to see lots of collateral damage in Apocalypse which I just loved. Sometimes I'd set off detonation packs randomly just to see various parts of a structure collapse.

As far as real time and turn based, The RT combat of apocalypse played pretty well because you could constantly pause it whenever you wanted, so it had the turn based feel still, though it did lose some of the tactical aspect. Though it was really nice for some missions later on when you wanted to breeze by it. Often a problem that the first two games had was that every little skirmish took awhile, which sorta sucked when you had your guys well equipped and just wanted to conquer a small UFO that crashed.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 2:07 am

Meh, the cityscape filled me with equal parts rage and rage. Especially Transteller, who provide all agent and scientist transfers except agents riding around in your vehicles. By elevated rail that explodes on contact with weapon fire.

X-com util handles inventory management pretty well, and i frankly preferred re-equipping everyone every mission to realizing i should have when no one had any ammo because they don't refill automatically.

Transforming a Cultist temple into a flaming shell of a building with Det-Packs, rocket launchers, grenades, and autocannon fire was pretty sweet, though. Getting some guys killed because luxury apartment builders believe in glass over walkways on columns that can't take disruptor fire was considerably less sweet. Oh, and i've not noticed much of an improvement in last alien syndrome, especially since now flattening everything that exists actually does cost you, unlike in the orignials where you could solve that problem with liberal application of things that go boom. Like every single other problem.

Pyromania is perfectly useful in both games, someone had a non-flying suit nighttime snakeman terror mission with no losses using things that go boom.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 2:48 am

I got stuck for ages in x-com UFO because big ships would spawn at the south pole then immediately attack my south pole base and explode (because I'd caught onto this, so my south pole base was basically a giant weapons platform), so I never shot one down with interceptors

This caused immense confusion because it took me ages to figure out that I had to shot one down to capture the corpse of a special alien who only spawned on those battleships.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:37 am

You know, when you let one of those guys through, they forget you have a base there. The attack force has a commander in it.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:59 am

Yeah, it just didn't occur to me for ages to let one go! The base was seriously 90% weapons platforms with one of the better radar thingys and 1 storage room and 1 living quaters because they'd attack so often. Everything else was guns. I eventually worked out what to do and dismantled it.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 6:14 pm

Prak_Anima wrote: yes, those are great aspects... but how do you cheat [Fable 1]?

Fable is piss easy to cheat.

You can easily get multiple semi-unique items by doing part of a mission, doing a Hero save, and quitting before doing it again. This also can get you infinite experience, and probably (though I don't remember trying it) infinite Silver Keys.

The other part is the forcefield spell which if you get at least one mana boost gem is permanently on and just requires you to stock up on mana potions and keep spamming them as you get hit: you don't get hurt which means you don't lose your combat multiplier. You can ignore tactics and just keep hitting them getting your combat multiplier as high as possible and getting frankly retarded amounts of experience without skill. Together with a couple of places with infinite spawning enemies meant you could get everything pumped up easily.

And even ignoring these, the easiest pub game is in Bowerstone and it takes only a short amount of time to get a lot of money. Once you get enough if you repeatedly buy and sell a lot of expensive items as a stack from the same shopkeeper you get lots of money.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 8:07 pm

And even if you don't do any of the above things, resurrection potions are cheap as free anyway and you can load up on a retarded amount of them.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 9:45 pm

name_here wrote: X-com util handles inventory management pretty well, and i frankly preferred re-equipping everyone every mission to realizing i should have when no one had any ammo because they don't refill automatically.

Well, the thing I hated was that everyone had different stats, like Strength which determined how much you could carry, how many AP they got and so on. And naturally you wanted your strongman to carry the autocannon, you wnated your psychic guys to carry the psionic stuff, and your sharpshooters generally wanted to use the rifles.

Only, it was a bitch in the original games to remember who was who. So you pretty much just handed equipment out at random (or at least I did). The only real differential marker you had was armor, so I would give all my elite guys pwoer armor and just cared about them. Then I filled out the rest with a bunch of mooks in light or no armor. That worked well for me in UFO Defense, but in TFtD I got my ass handed to me. The Alien mind control was just a fucking bitch and the alien bases in TFtD were just slaughterhouses as they turned more and more of my guys on each other, or just rendered them useless as they panicked and fired off all their guns.

My other beef with the psionics was that you never really got any prompt or icon until the team member actually went batshit nuts, but it took multiple mind attacks. You would hear the psiatack sound but wouldn't always know who got psiblasted. So you had to go through each crewmember manually to see who was affected so you could have them drop their weapons. A "Cthulhu fucked with my head last turn" icon would have been really helpful.

I will go back and beat that fucking game someday.... damn you Cthulhu!!!

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 11:43 pm

I had my soldiers called things like HPGuns1 through 10 and PsiC 1 through 10 etc to I could remember exactly that.

Where HP was heavy plasma

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 11:52 pm

I did that to a limited extent, but only really made sure of it on my psionic dudes.

Yeah, TFTD is a bitch. Especially early game alien bases. I actually pulled off a suicide run on a base with no sonic or MC gear, and i don't think i even had drills or mag ion armor. Certainly most of my guys were in personal armor or underwater coveralls, and unsuprisingly all of those guys died. However, in part two of the base attack, the lobstermen were all wandering randomly around and i literally only had to fight the guys in the command room, which i did with the anti-tentaculat suicide charges all my guys were wearing.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 11:04 am

Anyone seen the new NATAL control system? Its apparently for the next Xbox and is an integrated eyetoy/microphone control system.

There are a couple of videos of people interacting with it and commentaries on it. Introduced by Peter Molyneux. It's supposed to be the future of gaming.

Yeah, right.

First of all, you can't tell whether the characters are reacting to the actor interfacing with NATAL or with a script they are both following. Its just like having prerendered game footage used in previous E3s.

Secondly, its Peter Fucking Molyneux. The guy behind Fable and Fable 2. The one who promised that you would have trees growing in-game, and you could marry the mayor's daughter, kill the mayor and inherit the village. Even in Fable 2 he was promising and had video footage of being able to pick up tables and chairs and hit people with them. He is pretty much the definition of impossible promises and letdowns.

Most of the people who've heard about it don't think much of it. Based on the videos, a lot of the games require a large television, lots of movement, being close to the television and lots of talking. One article I read said that for a racing game you have to stand on one leg and push one foot forward to accelerate. For some reason this seems more mainstream and short period gaming than the Wii.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 2:06 pm

Molyneux is a dreamer, and makes dreamer's games.

Unfortunately, not everything makes the final game.

But he doesn't push vaporware, just... Ideas which haven't quite been figured out why you'd want to do that yet.

-Crissa

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 3:07 pm

Which, unfortunately, means you can never take anything he says seriously.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 4:55 pm

I like the Penny Arcade take on it. And the i-am-bored.com comment of "Wait until the porn industry gets hold of this."

At any rate, the best thing E3 had is what might end up being the best game ever: Scribblenauts for the DS. Write the word in, and that object* appears there for you to use. With a dictionary in the tens of thousands, ranging from the kitchen sink (confirmed) to Internet/4chan jokes (longcat is conformed, "keyboard cat" and "lolwut" both do something) to hydras and ray guns.

One reviewer:

"I was fighting robot zombies and my raygun was useless. So I scribbled in 'Time Machine', and it created one. I hopped in and chose to go to the past. There were dinosaurs, and upon tapping one I discovered I could ride them. So I rode a dinosaur back into the time machine, back to the present, and used it to trample all over the robot zombies."

Nothing could possibly be this awesome.

*Can't be a proper noun or a vulgarity.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 6:19 pm

That sounds surprisingly awesome, and cements the DS as the best console. This is now objective fact. The DS supports trampling all over Robot Zombies with a Dinosaur.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 8:30 pm

What's everyone's opinion on difficulty in video games?

Me, I don't sweat the issue too much personally. Henry Hatsworth and Ninja Gaiden, for example, are difficult games but I enjoyed the hell out of them. Similarly, you can't really find an easier game than Kirby Super Star or Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and I still love the hell out of those games.

I do understand people getting frustrated at really hard games, especially if they look like they would be really fun otherwise, so it's not like I'm looking down on those people. If someone can't beat your game without a lot of practice then you should include an 'easy mode' option to let them get through it. And don't lock them out of seeing certain story elements, that's just cruel.

Though like I said earlier, I don't like 'difficult' RPGs like Final Fantasy IV for the DS and nearly everything Atlus has ever made because difficulty in those games usually boils down to you having to grind a lot more or getting really lucky. I hate forced grinding and I hate being at the mercy of the RNG, so I guess that explains it.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 8:44 pm

I don't mind a hard game I'm enjoying. I feel like I've done something when I beat it.

But games where you can't screw up or YOU DIE? That can get annoying.

But, really, games these days are easy compared to back in the NES days. Back in the Mega Man days, you were, apparently, not supposed to beat a game. I never beat Super Mario Bros. 3. Or ANY Mega Man game.

But some games are just so hard that...what's the point? FF6 on the Game Boy Advance reaches a point where...If you want to get the good stuff, you have to contend with critters breaking out Ultima on you at any moment.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 8:45 pm

Yeah, I dislike games where the difficulty is based on how much you've grinded. Actually, wait, I can enjoy games where you can grind as much as you want as long as you don't have to, the gameplay is fun and it doesn't get too repetitive. I don't mind skill difficulty so much but things like Ninja Gaiden are getting on the stupid side of difficult.

Puzzle games like Henry Hatsworth (if my memory is correct and it is a puzzle game) are more difficult. Obviously making three versions of the same puzzle or worse, three puzzles in order to have different difficulties is hell on the developers, but hints can backfire and some puzzles are either long winded and boring or require a specific mindset and flash of insight. They are probably best on the DS so you can close it up and go think for a while and come back when you have an answer.

Edit: oh, wait, I didn't put an opinion. I mostly dislike puzzle games because the difficulty tends to vary too much: the early parts are way too easy and it suddenly get way too hard and time consuming.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 8:56 pm

But, really, games these days are easy compared to back in the NES days. Back in the Mega Man days, you were, apparently, not supposed to beat a game. I never beat Super Mario Bros. 3. Or ANY Mega Man game.

I don't know about that. A lot of difficulty on earlier games was just based on the fact that they expected you to do the whole thing on a limited amount of tries. Even ridiculously hard game nowadays don't make you do that. For example, if you had unlimited continues Ninja Gaiden 3 or Contra wouldn't be especially hard. I never really had a problem with any of the Megaman games since a big portion of those games were finding out patterns. I didn't care much for Punch-Out! though since the later matches, rather than really upping the difficulty of the opponents, just made your window of opportunity to attack smaller. Lame.

Puzzle games like Henry Hatsworth (if my memory is correct and it is a puzzle game) are more difficult. Obviously making three versions of the same puzzle or worse, three puzzles in order to have different difficulties is hell on the developers, but hints can backfire and some puzzles are either long winded and boring or require a specific mindset and flash of insight. They are probably best on the DS so you can close it up and go think for a while and come back when you have an answer.

Henry Hatsworth isn't really a 'think your way through' puzzle game; it's a dual-genre game with a typical 2D platformer and a puzzle game reminescent of Tetris Attack or Panel de Pon that you play at the same time. Things you do in one realm affect the other.

But yeah, I remember the 'good' old days of adventure game puzzles. Leisure Suit Larry (except for the second one) wasn't so bad but King's Quest and Space Quest wanted to make me chuck the games out of the window. The thing I liked about Quest for Glory is that they gave you advance notice of the more difficult puzzles you need to overcome and also ways to overcome the more 'mundane' ones.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 9:03 pm

I go pretty much the same way, enjoying both easy and difficult ones, although i can be pushed too far, especially with difficulty from RNG. Fallout once prompted me to throw my mouse at the screen because of the fucking instant death flamethrower crits through hardened power armor.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 9:18 pm

Parthenon wrote:Yeah, I dislike games where the difficulty is based on how much you've grinded. Actually, wait, I can enjoy games where you can grind as much as you want as long as you don't have to, the gameplay is fun and it doesn't get too repetitive. I don't mind skill difficulty so much but things like Ninja Gaiden are getting on the stupid side of difficult.

There is a game I've played which manages to make the grind fun. You are, however, playing a game where you run around in a Biggish Mech gunning down other mechs for moneys, in downtown Tokyo. It incorporated Optical Camoflage and Missile Locks, which made it all kinds of fun. The missile alerts really broke up the tedium and the urban environment gave the AI a good chance of unintentionally breaking your locks by dodging past scenary. The game also included a mass of Japanese indie music (because the licence costs were essentially "we'll give you free advertising") and gave you the ability to create your own playlists.

Phantom Crash, it was called. It's a shame I don't have access to the game any longer (it was a friend's, and he's now my Canadian friend).

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 9:36 pm

Parthenon wrote:Yeah, I dislike games where the difficulty is based on how much you've grinded. Actually, wait, I can enjoy games where you can grind as much as you want as long as you don't have to, the gameplay is fun and it doesn't get too repetitive. I don't mind skill difficulty so much but things like Ninja Gaiden are getting on the stupid side of difficult.

You know what? That's another thing I don't like about certain games. The fact that they punish you for doing bad at a certain part and doing good at other points.

Ninja Gaiden for example rewards players who do well with higher karma bonuses, which is used to buy stupid shit to make them more powerful. Iof you do poorly, not only do you get less karma but even more of your money is sucked down the drain buying healing items.

Granted, this is a feature of almost any game in existence that doesn't give you a bonus for doing poorly, but Ninja Gaiden goes too far by turning it into a death spiral. You should only be allowed to suck a finite amount then the game either kicks you out or gives you enough stuff to be at a certain 'baseline' for the next level of difficulty. For example, in Super Mario World if you're good enough you can rack up a bunch of lives and powerups and make the next stages of the game that much easier. But if you suck too much the game takes pity on you and gives you five extra lives and lets you go back to previous stages for more powerups. It never gets to a point where you're expected to do future levels on one life and no power-ups, which games like Ninja Gaiden and God of War almost force you to do.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 10:00 pm

Oh yeah, Phantom Crash was brilliant. If only it had more than three maps. Unfortunately I haven't had it for a few years. If I remember rightly, there was a sequel on the PS2. Maybe I should try and get hold of it.

DragonChild · Post by **DragonChild** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 10:06 pm

Similarly, you can't really find an easier game than Kirby Super Star

To be fair, the Arena could be quite difficult.

Have you played the DS remake? It adds an even TOUGHER arena that is... quite, quite difficult. My girlfriend and I spent a while trying to master it. It was hard, but every time we lost, we felt like it was because of something we had done. It was our fault for misreading the pattern, not being fast enough, being to aggressive or too defensive, etc. That, I think, is an important part of game difficulty. As long as it feels like it's something you could have avoided that made you lose, it's not so bad.