What are you playing today?

[Xyton]

I think you can do that after the last mission if you save her (which you can only do if you go after everyone as soon as they are abducted).

[Delphine]

GO SAVE THEM NOW OR YOU'LL REGRET IT

[Opa-Opa]

<------

Second'd

[Green Gibbon!]

So I saved everyone's candy ass from the bug monsters and that stupid bitch still won't let me ask her to dinner. What the hell. Can I just straight up ask her to feed my goddamn fish? I think it's a pretty small request under the circumstances.

[Xyton]

Are you talking to her directly or trying to call her up from the intercom. I think you need to use the latter.

[Green Gibbon!]

What intercom?

I've already done all the missions, so there's no point in having her feed my fish now. But it's a goddamn matter of principle.

[Xyton]

After I finished the final mission I noticed there was an intercom on the desk I could use to invite my love interest up to the room. First time through I didn't have a loe interest, so had no such option. Don't know if you get Kelly up that way, though. :s

According to the Mass Effect wiki,

Shepard can flirt with Kelly anytime prior to the suicide mission, which eventually results in a private dinner at the captain's quarters, after which she offers to feed Shepard's fish. If Kelly is among the crewmates saved from the Collector's base, and if Shepard breaks up with an existing romance partner, she will send a message on the terminal telling Shepard to use the intercom to invite her up into Shepard's cabin.

So… maybe the game thinks you're in another relationship?

[Green Gibbon!]

Does it count if I imported my character from ME1? I avoided the three potential love interests - other than stringing them along, of course - but I've still got the picture of Liara on my desk. I don't think I can break up with Liara unless I doink one of the other chicks, and I'm afraid that will have repercussions in ME3.

At any rate, I don't think I missed any chances to flirt with Kelly and there was never any dinner. Just a lot of dead fish that rekindled some deep-set inner guilt.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

I just played through Monster World IV. It was pretty fun! It didn't really do anything that I haven't seen before, but that's not what I look for in a game anymore; as long as it does everything well, I can forgive the unoriginality. The way you use your pepeloogu was interesting, though. Shame the series ending just as they got the controls down,too.

I find it irksome that Asha--or any WB/MW protagonists for that matter--did not make it into Allstar Racing, despite me not owning Allstar Racing.

[plasticwingsband]

I find it irksome that Asha--or any WB/MW protagonists for that matter--did not make it into Allstar Racing, despite me not owning Allstar Racing.

They could have included Joe Musashi on a horse or a hoverboard, Gilluis Thuderhead on one of those chicken/lizard things, Axel, Blaze & Adam in a liberated squad car... instead, what do they foist us? The fucking Bonanza Bros. and Billy Hatcher. BILLY GODDAMN HATCHER!

It's pretty infuriating if you ask me.

[Green Gibbon!]

I picked up Heavy Rain a couple days ago. It's not really a game, of course, though it tries very hard to be. The range of things you can do at any given time is very limited, but the control you have over each mundane movement is... well, it's kind of bizarre. There are QTE variations for everything - fighting, driving, opening doors, shaving, drinking orange juice - as lame as it sounds (and kind of is), it's oddly engaging when you're actually doing it, but I still have absolutely no idea what the designers were hoping to achieve. Their intent is incredibly ambiguous - I'm never quite sure what I'm supposed to be getting out of it.

The setting is unique and well-done, though generally unappealing. The same can be said of the themes and characters.

It's more like a choose-your-own-adventure game than anything else. I don't like it except when I'm playing it, if that makes any sense at all. In the end I think it's really just a novelty - an engima, even, "who in the world thought this would be a good idea, how did the budget ever get approved, and why do I keep playing it?"


I also started Rockman 10. Normal mode is too difficult but easy mode is too easy. I actually don't like having the choice, it's too distracting. No matter which one I try to play, I keep thinking, "I dunno, maybe I'll have more fun if I play the other mode..." Perhaps that's a personal problem. Decisiveness is not one of my strengths.

Which boss is the easiest to beat with just the normal buster?

[Shadow Hog]

I personally find Sheep Man to be a pretty good starting point; he's not particularly weak to the Buster, but his attack pattern is very simplistic and not too tricky to get the hang of on either difficulty.

[Yami CJMErl]

Okay, who let the spambot in?

[Dr. BUGMAN]

So on a whim, I picked up Shin Megami Tensai: Strange Journey. I've been playing RPGs sporadically for around a decade now, all of which pretty much count as 'beginners' games, I think--Pretty much just Mario RPGs, the first Golden Sun, the Mother series, um, Guadia Quest (if that counts). I feel like I'm kinda in over my head, even though I died only once yet (I'm past the first boss). I keep pissing off demons before I can recruit them, not even knowing if I want to recruit 'em. Then there's this whole "fusion" thing that I keep worrying will paint me in some corner. I was this close to fusing my first demons before one coughed up a "source forma" which gives the new demon far better moves.

I'm enjoying the atmosphere, though! Antarctica really is a great place to stage a horror story. Baffling it isn't often.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

So I dropped Strange Journey 'cause I realized I don't like RPGs that don't involve Mario, as sad as that sounds. Anyway, I revisited the Crash Bandicoot series (Naughty Dog only, though Huge Adventure is alright in a Sonic Pocket Adventure-sort-of-way.)

It's clear the planets really had to align for this series to rise above the Bubsies and Aeroes of the '90s. Namely it was the commercial pressure to utilize that extra axis that the 32-bit era made feasible without special chips or add-ons. And despite Naughty Dog's impetus to be a derivative developer, there weren't many full-roaming platformers from which to derive (Mario 64 was released when Crash 1 was too far in development stages, I think). I think the result is closer to what platformers were always at heart than Mario 64 was. The hallway style levels kind of feel like the forerunner to Mario Galaxy's inverted hamster tube levels in a strange way.

Also, Crash Team Racing is the best Mario Kart, unnerving trophy bandicoot girls and all.

[Isuka]

Man, I'm really sad with all those RRoD's popping up, almost everyone that I know who has a 360 (online, don't know anyone IRL yet) had that shit happen to him...

And OMG just look how much stuff I'm playing, I can't make up my mind on which one I should be focusing, I guess I'm catching up with some old stuff I wanted to try back in the day. I pretty much hated the original Jak and Daxter; lousy characters, lousy world, lousy "music" (if you can even call it that)... and I can't believe anyone, anywhere, could possibly not think Daxter is the most obnoxious videogame character of all time. But Jak II makes them somewhat less ugly (although the red rat is still just as annoying) and navigating the map a little bit less of a chore and more of a game... not hot at all, but at least it doesn't stink so much.

Then there's Actress Again. The presentation is much better than I thought a previously doujin game would be: characters are extremely well animated, backgrounds are numerous and moody, the soundtrack is incredibly varied and catchy for a fighting game too, and it features one of the most polished, most elegant interfaces (you know, title screen, character selection, transitions et al.) right beside Guilty Gear XX. And while the game itself plays very well and the same character with a different style plays almost like an entirely new one, I stumbled with a somewhat funny problem: I'm not having much problem beating the game on a single credit with pretty much any of them on the highest possible difficulty setting. There's absolutely no other fighting gmae where I can do that, in some of them I even have trouble 1CC-ing the highest difficulty with my single best character... of course this isn't really a problem in a video arcade, but here I don't quite feel much excitement.

I just started BLACK yesterday, it's quite entertaining and fun, at least for someone who doesn't regularly play first-person shooters (i.e. at all). Dealing with a DualShock controller for these is the only annoyance, but I'm confident I'll get used to it sometime.

And what can I say about MDK2? I really like the first one's freshness and zany stuff, but this one is just trying too hard to be funny and wacky, and failing. And playing as the Doctor just blows.

[Shadow Hog]

And what can I say about MDK2? I really like the first one's freshness and zany stuff, but this one is just trying too hard to be funny and wacky, and failing. And playing as the Doctor just blows.

I love MDK2, though. :\

I mean, yes, the first MDK is more or less the more proper experience (although the years haven't been particularly kind on its control scheme, something I think the sequel deals with handily), but I've always had a soft spot for the sequel - playing it first probably helped. Although, admittedly, the Kurt stages were probably the best... never really minded Dr. Hawkins' stages, though the bread weapon is kind of hard to aim.

[gr4yJ4Y]

In my unchangeable fate of staying poor, I accidentally picked up BioShock 2 from the library. I actually thought it was BioShock 1 because there were stickers all over it covering up any identifiable part (like the title). I was pretty disappointed in it for the first hour or so. The graphics haven't aged well. The quality of Uncharted 2 and other titles spoiled me. This is one game that feels like it's constraining itself to work on the Unreal Engine.

It got a lot more interesting once I started having to use little sisters to get Adam. There's a ton of customization options for battle and it's unscripted enough for the gameplay to remain interesting (more so than the story in my opinion). Having not played the first one doesn't seem to have hindered my experience, even though I'm probably missing out on a ton of story details.

[G.Silver]

In my unchangeable fate of owning games that are not that good, I took some of my earnings from games I didn't want anymore and bought Bionic Commando and Golden Axe for 360. I haven't played BC much, but Golden Axe is actually effectively competing for time against Mario Galaxy 2. There's no question which is the better game and which is the one with extremely limited appeal, but after you get through the initial shock of everything that's wrong with it, there's actually something to like about it too. I'm to a point now where it's become somewhat compelling. I think much of the scorn thrown at the game is deserved (not being 2-player, and lacking many qualities associated with good games on general principle), but there's some enjoyable stuff in there too. I might have felt different had I paid more than $7 for it.

[Green Gibbon!]

You can rent games from libraries, now?

[Crisis]

I remember my library started renting games shortly after the PlayStation launch. You had to pay an extra fee, though. I'm not sure if that's still the case, but either way, I checked every week for months and they seemed to stock every game imaginable except the ones that I wanted. Well, that or they were getting snapped up before I got there. The combination of high fees and terrible games eventually put me off the concept altogether.

Is there a British equivalent to GameFly yet? I noticed that GAME has a similar service at a significantly higher price, but is that the best option?

[j-man]

Blockbuster's probably your best bet, or LOVEFiLM if you like weird capitalisation and hate leaving your house.

Then again, I never rent games anymore, I tend to wait 'til they're around a fiver and pick them up from Tesco, absolutely shitfaced, at three in the morning. I've often woken up next to games I didn't remember from the night before. I felt like such a whore.

[Wombatwarlord777]

So, I've been playing Pokemon SoulSilver on and off for the last three weeks, and it's fulfilled most of my expectations. The battle system has gotten a tad dull over four generations of with no major innovations, but hey, you know that when you buy a Pokemon game. I am stoked over the sheer amount of monsters to collect in this particular remake, though.

The only thing that I seriously dislike is the new Safari Zone. Waiting ten days at a time to catch most Hoenn and Sinnoh Pokemon is a drag.

[Crisis]

I just played the first Doctor Who Adventure Game. It was pretty decent! It was like a bad episode of the show, but with cool minigames every 5 minutes. I am a little worried about how they're going to pad it out over 4 games, though. And how they're expecting to meet their release schedule of 3 games before the finale with 1 (2 if I'm generous) episodes to go.

Have the BBC (or any other government body) ever produced a game of this quality before? I know there have been a billion flash games (and frankly most of the minigames are interchangeable with the flash games if you ignore the consistent environments, characters, and plot), but this is a proper Video Game like the kind I would go out and buy for myself. Except for free. I feel like this is a concept I should be getting behind. It also (allegedly) ties into the TV show in the same way that the actual episodes do, which is the first time this has been attempted to my knowledge?

[Dash]

I've become a big fan of Doctor Who in the past year, and from what I understand this game probably ties into the show about as much as the comic series or other spin-off stuff does. Either way, I'm interested in trying it! I'm a little saddened that you guys get it for free while us Yanks will have to pay, but apparently it is pretty good. Developed by Sumo Digital too... so that may be a factor in it's quality.


So I picked up God Hand the other day. I can see why it didn't sell, but man it's pretty brilliant in it's own way. A great new age beat 'em up. I've been playing on Easy so far, and it's still a nice challenge. I was trying to explain it to a friend the other day, but holy crap, the first thing they ask me is "what's the story?". I had to go for like 5-10 minutes explaining how much that didn't matter, because the fun lies in the brawling. Then again, I forgot this friend's action game experience is Dynasty Warriors(ugh) so I don't think he'd like it.