When was the last you felt bad while playing a videogame?

[Omni Hunter]

I didn't like the low amount of time you could run but I suppose that added to the tension in the atmosphere. It's more of a personal annoyance than the actual game being crap I suppose.

[Delphine]

That one little thing? It's called realism, man. Some random guy can't sprint forever and ever without running out of breath.

[chriscaffee]

I doubt some random guy could pick up a gun and survive an army of the undead either. Gameplay > Realism, unless realism is what you are driving at, which I don't think is the case in this case.

[Green Gibbon!]

There's a whole series of games like that in Japan but only the one came out over here (thank Atlus, as usual).

Was it a series? I only remember that one and a director's cut or something. I had the US version sitting on my shelf for quite a while, but I ended up trading it in before I'd ever even played it. I guess that was a mistake.

I just noticed Atlus has already picked up Samurai Western, which greatly pleases me. I guess the Way of the Samurai games aren't really good, but I totally dig 'em anyway, and I know Atlus is trustworthy. I think Atlus is probably the all-round most reliable localization company in terms of being as true as possible to the source material. I can't think of any instances where they've even changed a game's title except for Rhapsody, and that is admittedly a more descriptive name than "Puppet Princess", though I still wish they hadn't done it. I keep hoping they'll pick up Bumpy Trot.

[Neo Yi]

Uncomfortable experience?

Remembering that I played such crap games like Home Alone for the SNES and Bonkers as a child...and liking it at the time.
~Neo

[Psxphile]

I think Atlus is probably the all-round most reliable localization company in terms of being as true as possible to the source material.

Atlus is the Funimation of the game industry. Lots of bad calls at first but gradually made great pains to alleviate the mistakes they made with later franchises. I mean, if you've seen how drastically altered <i>Revelations: Persona</i> is to <i>Shin Megami Tensei: Persona</i>, would you really praise them so quickly? It's fortunate that they redeemed themselves with a nearly spotless translation of (at least) <b>one</b> of its sequels (a fact still lamented by the greater Megami Tensei fanbase) during the Playstation's last hurrahs of quality game releases.

All in all however, they've done quite well for themselves lately. Shame that a majority of the titles they release only appeal to a minsicule audience, which tend to consist mainly of female goth japanophiles (not that there's anything wrong with that). Most of which came on board partly in thanks to Disgaea, whose developer has gone on to localize their popular stategy titles for themselves, leaving Atlus with very little to build on.

[Locit]

Perhaps they'll pick up Bumpy Trot?

I felt kinda bad in Jade Empire playing the path of the closed fist.

[Green Gibbon!]

Is the Megami Tensei series any good? I never really sat down to play one, but I've been curious except for the uncertainty associated with a 15-year old series that still has sequels hocked up on a regular basis.

[aso]

Once you play RE4, you won't be able to play the others anymore. I tried to play the REmake, just for kicks, and I couldn't stand it. CVX is pretty annoying as it is anyway.

Eh, I can get back and forth from REmake/RE0 and RE4 without too much hassle... Really, it's like playing games from two different series'. I still play through RE4 on a regular basis, either to relive the single player game or fuck around in Mercenaries mode. And I occasionally put around in REmake simply because I never beat it... It's not like I don't know what happens anyway. Plus, the fighting is easy as hell-- Dodge, turn, R+A, repeat. You don't even have to aim most of the time.

What I meant with the enemies in Silent Hill is, in the 2nd one they'd pop out of somewhere, and whether it was because Silent Hill 2 had a better atmosphere or just that the monsters were scarier, I would be genuinely scared of the monsters. In 3 and 4, the monsters weren't scary at all, and I knew I could pretty much take them with my pipe or stick or whatever.

The ghosts in Silent Hill 4 weren't so bad-- You can run past most of them without taking too much damage from their "aura" (I never used those medallion things around the normal ghosts), and I pinned most of the "special" ghosts with swords. They really weren't all that scary.

Yeah, Silent Hill 2 did do that rather well - the straitjackets can pop out from under cars, and the mannequin legs don't even start moving until you approach that. All of the enemies also had a very nice, decayed, disgusting look, particularly the nurses, what with their melted faces and all. All of the enemies also had a disturbing symbolism to them, something that SH3 lacked. (The "symbolism" for the enemies of the third entry aren't too deep.)

I don't know why, maybe because it was the first Silent Hill title I became genuinely interested in, but SH3 still remains a sort of favorite despite the lack in creepiness that was definitely present in SH1, and partially present in SH2.

Oh, most of the ghosts aren't too bad... some of them are just rather creepy, especially with that sprouting from the belly of hell entrance some of them did. All of the 'special' ghosts have rather creepy introductions, and the design/attacks of Andrew and Richard disturbed me a bit. It's an especial pain if you wasted the sword on a regular ghost instead of a special ghost, because then you'll have Cynthia chasing you near the end of the game. Walter was highly annoying, though, especially since you really can't kill him.

Oh, and Omni, SH2 might not have been as good as 1 or 3 (in my opinion) but it was still a very solid, creepy title. And I don't know what you mean by not being able to run much. Just head towards a door and James is rejuvenated.

Worse yet is Siren, where the character slows down quite a bit after running for too long, or Dark Messiah, where your guy goes into a near heart attack from running too long. Now that's an annoyance.

[Squirrelknight]

I don't know what extent thing musical aspect of FFX2 plays in the game, but if you haven't played it already, try to score yourself a copy of Rhapsody for the PS1, where the characters frequently break out into song and dance for no reason at all. Admittedly, they are just little sprite-based song and dance routines, but it's charming as can be. There's a whole series of games like that in Japan but only the one came out over here (thank Atlus, as usual).

Rhapsody was awesome... The gameplay as a bit too easy, but it had singing and dancing and alligator suits so it balanced out. I'm not sure if I'm just confused, but was that game developed by Nippon Ichi?

Worse yet is Siren, where the character slows down quite a bit after running for too long, or Dark Messiah, where your guy goes into a near heart attack from running too long. Now that's an annoyance.

Siren was a big disappointment. That whole "sight-jacking" gimmick was poorly implemented-- Around the 2nd or 3rd level I figured out it was easier to run through the level using trial-and-error than to use sight-jacking to plan a careful route around the shibito. The horrible British dub didn't help either.

[Cuckooguy]

<a href="http://www.atlus.com/rhapsody.html">Yes, it was developed by Nippon Ichi</a>

<a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... WDVW">Damn that price tag.</a>

That one little thing? It's called realism, man. Some random guy can't sprint forever and ever without running out of breath.

I'm reminded of the time I played Lunar 2. Hiro's dashing pissed me off at first, but then I got used to it.

[EmeraldGuardian]

The end of Kingdom Hearts. ;_; Cried and felt like I was gonna die for like a week. It was so frickin sad. Then there's back when I was like 5 yrs old and the ghosts from Sonic&Knuckles scared the shit outta me. My dad beat it for me lol. And when I thought Hyrule Field's kid Stalfos in OoT were a threat.

[Protodude]

You cried at the end of KH? Damn.

[Green Gibbon!]

I'm reminded of the time I played Lunar 2. Hiro's dashing pissed me off at first, but then I got used to it.

Hiro dashes? When does he do that?

[aso]

Worse yet is Siren, where the character slows down quite a bit after running for too long, or Dark Messiah, where your guy goes into a near heart attack from running too long. Now that's an annoyance.

Siren was a big disappointment. That whole "sight-jacking" gimmick was poorly implemented-- Around the 2nd or 3rd level I figured out it was easier to run through the level using trial-and-error than to use sight-jacking to plan a careful route around the shibito. The horrible British dub didn't help either.

I thought Siren was all right, but opinion is mixed about it. I thought the sightjacking was a neat idea, but it was frustrating to use - swiveling your analog sticks around until you got a lock on. Didn't help that you could only assign four different sightjacks.

But it is required, especially in the stages where you're escorting another character... there are usually very nasty sniper shibito about, and not keeping an eye on what they're doing can lead to a very quick failure in the mission. I've never been very good at blundering through and lucking out.

And no, the dub wasn't very good, but I found it better than Fatal Frame's (where the characters all seem to speak in drab monotones)!

[Cuckooguy]

I'm reminded of the time I played Lunar 2. Hiro's dashing pissed me off at first, but then I got used to it.

Hiro dashes? When does he do that?

When you... press some button, Hiro does a small short dash (I'm pretty sure he did). Then he starts walking again, so you have a 2 second walk every time you want to dash again. I believe this only applies to dungeon maps.

Perhaps I should've mentioned it was the PlayStation remake; I should check out the SegaCD rom version, of which I have in my possession but have yet to check out, as I do not know if the dash applies. I tried to play Lunar: Silver Star on the Sega CD, but the dreary colors made me depressed (in comparison to the PlayStation remake's more vibrant colors).

[Green Gibbon!]

Oh right, yeah, the dungeons in the Saturn/PSX versions of Lunar have a totally different engine. It's not like that in the original Sega CD versions - encounters are random, so there's no running from them. Plus the overworld/town/dungeon engine is all the same thing.

Of course I like the original Sega CD versions better than the remakes, but that's because I was there when they were new and cool, so I have nostalgia on that side. There were a couple of story changes that I really don't think were a good idea, though - the characters Rouyce and Faithia weren't in the original version of Silver Star. They're pretty redundant and take depth away from Xenobia, who originally had most of their roles. There were a couple of things in Eternal Blue though nothing as major, except the burning of Azado, which, in the original Sega CD version, was started by Mauli herself and not some nameless priests sitting up in the tower.

[Squirrelknight]

<a href="http://www.atlus.com/rhapsody.html">Yes, it was developed by Nippon Ichi</a>

<a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... WDVW">Damn that price tag.</a>

Wow. I didn't know it was worth that much. My bro bought it a few years ago for like fifteen bucks new. I should go tell him what its worth before he trades it in or something.

The end of Kingdom Hearts. ;_; Cried and felt like I was gonna die for like a week. It was so frickin sad

Yeah, that ending for KH was rough. I didn't cry, but damn, was that depressing. FFX was equally depressing, since I beat it before they announced FFX-2 and ruined everything.

[Psxphile]

Is the Megami Tensei series any good? I never really sat down to play one, but I've been curious except for the uncertainty associated with a 15-year old series that still has sequels hocked up on a regular basis.

Only if you're a masochist.

Seriously, the series is renowned for its dungeon crawls through miles upon virtual miles of tunnels/corridors with too spaced out save points and its obscenely high random battle encounter rate. This is more or less made up for by an often engaging battle system that varies from the RPG norm by allowing you to enter into conversations with the demons you fight in order to convince them to join your side (or in Persona's case, hand over their Spell/Tarot cards), a more modern day setting (just about every SMT title takes place in present day Japan just before some huge accident that causes the entire world to literally transform into Hell) and some Jungian themes sprinkled about the plot to spice things up (at least, this is true with the Persona series).

The SMT games on the Super Fami were mostly 1st person dungeon crawls, while the Persona series tried to change things around by going the traditional overhead 3rd person route, at least in the case of the sequels. Persona 1 was a little mixed up in terms of its identity and used 3 different POVs for pretty much the same thing. I've yet to play <i>Nocturne</i> so I can't tell you how that one does things differently. If you <b>did</b> plan on easing your way into the franchise, the Persona's are a good way to test the waters, long as you don't have a problem with PS1-era graphics.

[Ngangbius]

^One of these days, I need to open up my sealed copy of Shin MegaTen: Nocturne, play it, and maybe post some impressions here of the game.

[tornadot]

I hated the ending of FFX and I also felt pretty bad when I scared the living daylights out of my siblings by playing the ghost levels in various Mario games...

[JessicaPadkin]

I actually cried trying to figure out that 'Tower of Illusion' puzzle in Shining the Holy Ark. What kind of sadist came up with that one?

[smiths32]

I felt bad when I bumped into the first Goomba in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. a few days ago, it was quite humiliating.

[Light Speed]

You know that music that plays when Sonic is going to drown? For some reason that music really made me panic when I was younger to the point that I'd usually throw down the controller and run outa the room.

Good times...

[Omni Hunter]

Running into Bata-batas,
Crying when Sonic goes *doo-doom*,
Getting hit by the wrecker ball boss repeatedly,
Classics