Video Games

[The Lunatic Fringe]

I am now addicted to minecraft. I wish that I weren't in school at the same time.

[Koumei]

I used to play the free version of Minecraft, without the monsters and inventory and stuff. The full version sounds a lot more fun, but still, free version was cool.

[TheFlatline]

Playing Red Dead Redemption. Cool game with lots of neat options for a sandbox. However the repeated "save my cart!" or "shoot down my girlfriend from the tree before she strangles to death!" moments are as tiresome as the dating in GTA4. Or the working out/eating in GTA3.

I like the survivalist options... except for treasure hunting. There should be a rule against programming poorly drawn maps in 3rd-person shoot 'em ups. Leave that crap for Myst.

The atmosphere is excellent and I actually get a kick out of playing poker and liars dice in-game. Blackjack sucks.

It's worth grinding through the challenges. The Legend of the West outfit restores your deadeye meter a lot quicker, which is awesome.

I just wish they'd release more single player content. The multiplayer is cool, but it's not my thing.

[Princess]

I think you can do it in less than six if you have two Rings of Varda and a Crissagrim and you're high level (60+ or so). It's been years since I've done it, but I do remember counting seconds in my head as I fought him. I could have sworn I did it in something stupid like two seconds or so.

I prefer to use Shield Rod + Medusa Shield instead of Crissaegrims - it's far more spectacular. Btw I'm going to find my old save and check how much time it really takes.

[Jilocasin]

I used to play the free version of Minecraft, without the monsters and inventory and stuff. The full version sounds a lot more fun, but still, free version was cool.

Halloween will be a good day for minecraft.

http://www.minecraft.net/boo/

[Wesley Street]

I just wish they'd release more single player content. The multiplayer is cool, but it's not my thing.

Multiplayer is cool if it's a game that's intentionally designed for multiple players, like Battlefield or Warhawk or an MMORPG. Slapping multiplayer into a game run on Rockstar's GTA engine is irritating to me.

[RobbyPants]

I think you can do it in less than six if you have two Rings of Varda and a Crissagrim and you're high level (60+ or so). It's been years since I've done it, but I do remember counting seconds in my head as I fought him. I could have sworn I did it in something stupid like two seconds or so.

I prefer to use Shield Rod + Medusa Shield instead of Crissaegrims - it's far more spectacular. Btw I'm going to find my old save and check how much time it really takes.

I forgot: what's the shield rod do with the Medusa shield, again?

I know I've used it with the Alucard shield to good effect. In the early game, it works really well with the Iron shield.

[name_here]

So, I've actually played ME1 part of the way through instead of merely watching other people play it via the power of video-capture, livestream, and skype. Paragon Shepard is so much better-written than Renegade Shepard.

[The Lunatic Fringe]

I used to play the free version of Minecraft, without the monsters and inventory and stuff. The full version sounds a lot more fun, but still, free version was cool.

It is really excellent, but the multiplayer is still in dev and thus crazy unpolished. This sucks, because multi is the best part of the game.

[Maxus]

So, I've actually played ME1 part of the way through instead of merely watching other people play it via the power of video-capture, livestream, and skype. Paragon Shepard is so much better-written than Renegade Shepard.

Agreed.

And the female Shepard's voice acting is a lot...smoother. Shows more emotion, I guess.

[name_here]

I dunno, male Paragon Shepard seems pretty good for the characterization. He might have a pretty limited range, but it works for the lines paragon has.

[Maxus]

I dunno, male Paragon Shepard seems pretty good for the characterization. He might have a pretty limited range, but it works for the lines paragon has.

I'm not arguing that much, I'm just saying FShep has a much better range.

So when you joke around with Ashley--say, ribbing her for her sister saying Kaidan is cute--it actually comes off funny.

[Ganbare Gincun]

So, I've actually played ME1 part of the way through instead of merely watching other people play it via the power of video-capture, livestream, and skype. Paragon Shepard is so much better-written than Renegade Shepard.

I don't know how he played out in ME1, but Renegade Shepard sounds like a whiny bitch in ME2. I suspect that the worst that I'll end up with is a mostly-Paragon, slightly Renegade Shepard if I decide to "go Renegade". Sure, people will be killed in the name of vengeance and occasionally for the sake of humor, but I'll still go Paragon on the "big choices".

[Goldor]

So, I've actually played ME1 part of the way through instead of merely watching other people play it via the power of video-capture, livestream, and skype. Paragon Shepard is so much better-written than Renegade Shepard.

I don't know how he played out in ME1, but Renegade Shepard sounds like a whiny bitch in ME2. I suspect that the worst that I'll end up with is a mostly-Paragon, slightly Renegade Shepard if I decide to "go Renegade". Sure, people will be killed in the name of vengeance and occasionally for the sake of humor, but I'll still go Paragon on the "big choices".

I don't know, I think torturing a man to get info or killing off people one by one to get what you want isn't really whiny.. But then again I was mix of Paragon/Renegade, and usually always am for the most part XD.

[Maxus]

Confession time: I'm an idiot with online gaming and the paraphenalia thereof. I've yet to bother with it.

But for Christmas, I have a chance to surprise some of the family. My sisters both want to play the original Paper Mario, in addition to a couple of other games from when they were younger. I have a Wii. "Virtual Console!" says I (with apologies to Phone Lobster).

So, here's the situation:

-Wireless router here at home

-Broadband Internet

-Wii

-Very little financial obligation apart from paying a student loan every month.

Where do I start?

Fairly soon, I may be looking at an Xbox 360 (borrowing this one? Yeah, it sold me). I was also pleasantly surprised to find the 360 has Castlevania: Symphony of the Night downloaded onto it. So it might be nice to get a jump on this.

[Manxome]

Confession time: I'm an idiot with online gaming and the paraphenalia thereof. I've yet to bother with it.

But for Christmas, I have a chance to surprise some of the family. My sisters both want to play the original Paper Mario, in addition to a couple of other games from when they were younger. I have a Wii. "Virtual Console!" says I (with apologies to Phone Lobster).

So, here's the situation:

-Wireless router here at home

-Broadband Internet

-Wii

-Very little financial obligation apart from paying a student loan every month.

Where do I start?

Those are things that you already have? It should be pretty simple. Configure your Wii with the password for your wirless network (Wii system menu), then click on the Wii Shopping Channel from your home screen. You can buy Wii points there with a credit card, or buy a points card from a store and enter in the code printed on it, then use the points to buy games. N64 games are typically 1000 points = $10 US. You can buy either for the Wii you're browsing from, or buy the game as a gift on behalf of another Wii. You can only play the game on the Wii for which it was purchased.

Original Paper Mario is definitely available (I bought it myself), though I personally like The Thousand-Year Door better.

You may also need a Wii classic controller OR a GameCube controller if you don't already have one; I believe most N64 virtual console games require one of the two to play (Wiimote doesn't have as many buttons). Games will tell you in the store screen what controller(s) they're compatible with.

However, I don't think there's any good way to "hide" the game once you've purchased it, so if this is a Christmas gift you may want to wrap up the point card or an IOU and then do the actual purchase on Christmas day.

If you're going to get a lot of downloadable games, you may want an SD card to store them...though you can also just delete them and later re-download them (for free) if you want to play them again. Come to think of it, you could buy and download games in advance, save them directly to an SD card, and then wrap up the SD card as a gift, and provided no one else looks at those same games (or your shopping history) in the Wii Shopping Channel, I don't think there'd be any way to tell that you'd bought them.

Fairly soon, I may be looking at an Xbox 360 (borrowing this one? Yeah, it sold me). I was also pleasantly surprised to find the 360 has Castlevania: Symphony of the Night downloaded onto it. So it might be nice to get a jump on this.

Xbox360 does not come with wireless, and I have the vague impression that it requires a specialized and arbitrarily expensive adapater if you want to give it wireless, so it helps if you can just plug it directly into the router with an actual cable.

Other than that, Xbox Live Arcade is pretty similar to Wii Shopping Channel, except that there's free demos of everything and it can queue up downloads in the background while you do other stuff. You need a "gold membership" with a recurring fee in order to play online multiplayer, but you can shop and play games locally with a free "silver membership".

$10 US = 800 MS points, most XBLA games are 800-1200. Castle Crashers is a pretty nice game to play with family, even people who don't game much, since it's cooperative (up to 4 players, local and simultaneous) and fairly simple. Braid and Shadow Complex are also among my favorites.



Incidentally, either a Wii or an Xbox360 (with a gold membership) can also be used to stream movies from Netflix, if you have a Netflix membership. To do it on the Wii, you'll need to request a special disc from Netflix, but that's free.

[TarkisFlux]

However, I don't think there's any good way to "hide" the game once you've purchased it, so if this is a Christmas gift you may want to wrap up the point card or an IOU and then do the actual purchase on Christmas day.

You could also purchase it, download it, and then grab it (point at it and press A and B) and drag it to the right and leave it on the last available content page. It's not a great way to hide it, but it leaves it quickly accessible.

Alternately, like Manxome said you can download it and move it to an SD card, and then give them the SD card as the gift. That will keep it off the wii and hidden, but moving it back takes a bit of time. I'm honestly not sure if my SD card is just old and sucky or if the transfer is generally slower than just redownloading it.

Xbox360 does not come with wireless, and I have the vague impression that it requires a specialized and arbitrarily expensive adapater if you want to give it wireless, so it helps if you can just plug it directly into the router with an actual cable.

New model xbox 360 does come with builtin wireless. And is quieter. And does 1080p (instead of 1080i). And is all kinds of better. If wireless is a requirement, it will be cheaper to get an older model (possibly refurb) + wireless adapter, but I'd put out the extra cash for a new one.

[Surgo]

Anyone play BlazBlue? I picked it up...today! I started playing around with it for a bit...tried reading a few character guides and performing a pretty basic combo or two. Gives me a real question though:

Let's take a combo for Noel that registers as 17 hits in training mode. 5A -> 6A -> 6C (jump cancel after first hit) -> j.D -> d.5C -> d.6B -> d.6C -> 214D

Pretty straightforward for the most part, though the timing of the j.D can be tricky. But then I get outside of training mode, and everything seems to tech after the 6C, right as I'm jump canceling it. So, my question is, what can I do about that in general? Can you throw somebody as they tech? Is there something else I can do? Or are techs totally invincible?

I don't think I like Noel. Flashy combos, but they all deal ridiculously small amounts of damage. I think I'd rather use something boring but reliable.

[Surgo]

Received an answer to that question: "don't do techable combos". Ah well.

[Maxus]

This makes me want to replay the Quest for Glory games again.

Hey, Lago, take a look at how Rakeesh can throw down in the VGA version of QfG 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFPbVFdm ... re=related

Combat in that game is keyboard-based.

Thrust, swing, parry with weapon, block with shield, dodge right, dodge left, and step back.

I have to humbly admit that guy is better than I am. I played on Medium difficulty and...whoops...

Also: Thanks for the tips about the Wii and Xbox. Now that I know I won't have to jump through too many hoops...

[Lago PARANOIA]

One of the persistent complaints about the Quest for Glory 2 remake (actually, the only real one) is how they really cranked up the difficulty for the combat engine. In the original QFG2, you could seriously beat any opponent except for scorpions by spamming the attack button. Or if you have magic (which you should) by spamming the dazzle/stab combo.

Then again, I suppose that most of the people who play the remake nowadays have already played the original. But damn.


That said, I do hope that they remake QFG3 at one point. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game, but it's very easy to miss out on a lot of things and it also feels too short. It really needs another 'act' in it to feel complete, especially for fighters.

QFG4 also needs another act in it AND for there to be another stop on the 'overworld'. Unfortunately I don't think that there's any way in hell you can make a QFG4 without having the badass-to-the-max voice acting, so who knows.

Quest for Glory is one of those series that I would really like to have another entry for but am also aware that another canonical entry wouldn't be very good. Probably the best they could do is a side-story between QFG2 and 3, because the games are really tightly plotted.

[Maxus]

One of the persistent complaints about the Quest for Glory 2 remake (actually, the only real one) is how they really cranked up the difficulty for the combat engine. In the original QFG2, you could seriously beat any opponent except for scorpions by spamming the attack button. Or if you have magic (which you should) by spamming the dazzle/stab combo.

Then again, I suppose that most of the people who play the remake nowadays have already played the original. But damn.

This has a more scientific approach. I beat it with the Fighter and actually really enjoyed it. The video was done using a debug/stat editor that's unlocked when you beat the Pizza Elemental, which is why Rakeesh is so wicked at parrying (the player put his own Weapon skills at 0).

But even so, the guy has reflexes like a Dragonforce guitarist to be able to pull off blocks and parries at that speed.

Combat as the Mage or Thief can be a problem, though. Although you can throw daggers as the thief, the casting time on spells often gives monsters a precious moment to get an attack going. Meaning I spent a lot of my first Mage playthrough being thrown around by a Terrorsaurus.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Mage is tough at first, but I find that it actually really easymodes the game once you get the hang of your spells and get decently effective magic (which also means being able to cast more spells before you run out of mystical mojo). Also, if you grind encounters in the desert long enough, you can get almost as good in combat as a real fightan man.

The fact that Mages don't need to do most of the really hard fights also contributes. You get puzzles instead.

[Ganbare Gincun]

I don't know, I think torturing a man to get info or killing off people one by one to get what you want isn't really whiny.. But then again I was mix of Paragon/Renegade, and usually always am for the most part XD.

Alas, when Renegade Shepard isn't torturing people or shooting them in the face, he comes off like a punk ass bitch. Best to go Paragon/Renegade mix.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I've also heard that Renegade Shepard is a smug racist--as in, is willing to throw other races under the bus to protect humans. Confirm, deny?