Topics

106

Video Game Chat / Bayonetta: This is going to be the best!

« on: September 23, 2008, 04:01:55 AM »

Until today, I'd really only seen info on one of the upcoming PlatinumGames games. (PlatinumGames, you'll remember, is the studio that formed from the ashes of Clover.) This was MadWorld, the black-and-white-and-red-all-over hyperviolent Wii title. For reasons I'm not totally sure about, I recently started getting EGMs mailed to me. The one I just looked at had an interview with Hideki Kamiya, creator of a few little things like Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe and Okami. His new baby is called Bayonetta, and it's for the good system, Xbox 360 (and PS3).

Now I will quote things from the article so you can share in my excitement:

Bayonetta wields four guns in total: two guns in her hands and another two on her feet.

The names of Bayonetta's guns are Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme.

With Okami, I tried to create an adventure game that a lot of people could enjoy. But for this one, I'm really concentrating on the action. And we're a team that's really good at action games, so we wanna create an extreme action game. So when we call a climax scene a "climax scene", it's not just a climax scene–it's like the extreme climax scene. It's not just something that you can sit back and press the button and get through. You have to be really into the game and sweating and drying your contact lenses while you're playing. That kind of serious gameplay.

When she does the two-step jumps, she's using the power that only women have, the beautiful power, the beauty in women. Beauty power.

Bayonetta's outfit isn't actually leather despite the stitching you see in the CG art–it's magical hair that covers her entire body, and it's used in her attacks. So in-game, she'll become more and more unclothed as she uses these hair attacks. The most powerful ones render her almost completely nude.

But out of all those action titles, there's one game that I am paying really close attention to that I think is a rival series–a good game–which is called God of War. I guess they're working on a sequel? I want to make a game that exceeds God of War's sequel. That's one title that I'm paying attention to.

The whole theme of her attacks is "sexiness". When I was working on Dante's theme, it was "coolness", and Joe's theme was "beauty". When you punch somebody, you could just do a straightforward punch. But to make it cool, you have to add this one little move that makes it cool, and it's the same with Bayonetta. So what do I want Bayonetta to do was the question. What I want her to do is to use that little space to make herself look sexy.

This is going to be the best game ever.

107

Mario Chat / Burger King Presents Seth MacFarlane Presenting A Mario Short

« on: September 10, 2008, 07:21:54 PM »

Check this out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXdFSWqJWkI&fmt=18

108

Site Discussion / Allow All Discussions

« on: September 08, 2008, 09:53:30 PM »

This forum is way too moderated. We can't even talk about our own presidential election. When I grew up here, there were threads upon threads of people constantly arguing about every controversial issue under the sun. What changed?

109

Not at the Dinner Table / TMK Votes

« on: September 06, 2008, 07:09:35 PM »

If the Fungi Forums alone decided the presidential election, who would win? Vote here!

---------------------------------

I'm going Obama for three reasons:

1) A couple years ago, I bet my sister ten bucks that the next President would be either black or female. I was very pleased by the Democratic primary race. :)

2) McCain is too old. The older a brain is the harder it learns things, the harder it changes its mind based on new information, and the easier it goes crazy.

3) I'm "liberal".

110

Video Game Chat / Top Smasher in next Survivor

« on: August 30, 2008, 11:26:34 AM »

One of the world's top Smash Bros. players, Ken Hoang, is in the next Survivor which starts 9/25. I might actually watch until this guy gets voted off!

Link: http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor/bio/ken_17/bio.php?season=17

111

Video Game Chat / Helix: The Best Wii Game

« on: August 26, 2008, 06:48:59 PM »

Yesterday I first heard of Helix and it sounded like it could be good. Today I watched the info vid on the Nintendo Channel and it looked great. Then I got it and it was spectacular.

You hold a Remote in each hand and copy the moves of a robot who's about a beat ahead. Your moves end up going with the actual song. Above the robot is a scrolling bar that shows when each move should be starting and ending. You dance to no-name techno and songs about robots drinking juice. The remotes are both vibrating to the beat.

It was the most fun the Wii has ever blasted my brain with.


So as I see it, the current Wii game rankings are now:

Best) Helix
Second) WarioWare: Smooth Moves
Third) No More Heroes

112

Video Game Chat / Bleedthrough

« on: July 29, 2008, 03:02:50 AM »

Every day, every single day, I walk out of my door and see this:





and I think, every single time,

"I should shoot that with my pistol so I can get over there without Kryll eating me."


This is known as bleedthrough, when you find yourself stuck viewing reality through the filter of a game you've played a lot. For about a week after playing Pikmin 2, my eyes would uncontrollably latch onto garbage in the street. I could spot a yogurt lid from fifty paces, easy. I couldn't help it.

Tell tales of bleedthrough here.

113

Video Game Chat / Meet the...?

« on: June 24, 2008, 01:01:53 AM »

With the release of Meet the Sniper, we have 3 classes left. Which do you look forward to the most: Medic, Spy, or Pyro?

My vote goes to the Pyro. Medic and Spy do have great comedic potential, but the potential reveal of the Pyro's true face makes it my most anticipated. Heck, I bet they'll save it for last. And Spy second-to-last.

114

Video Game Chat / PAAOtRSPoDE1

« on: May 29, 2008, 03:28:44 AM »

Finished Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1 today. Now in the interest of full disclosure, I am a bit of a Penny Arcade fanboy, having read all the comics and newsposts a few times over, owning all the books, and listening to all the podcasts (podcasts are actually the best thing they put out, besides this game). So obviously I had high hopes for the game. My hopes weren't that high, however, since Gabe and Tycho are n00b game creators and the dev studio, Hothead, was also n00b (they did pick up the legendary Ron Gilbert along the way, though). But boy did they smash this one out of the ballpark. Best RPG I've played in a long time.

See, JRPGs have two main problems in my mind. The writing usually sucks and the combat is usually boring.

Writing) Now before you go off on me how uwesome the story of your favorite Kingdom Hearts XVII was, that's not really what I'm talking about. The overall story-plots of JRPGs are usually quite crazy, twisty, and cool with endearing characters. I'm talking about the actual writing sucking, the actual words popping up in those boxes. They're plain, boring, and simple. The Paper Marios are good examples of good JRPG writing. And now here's another (even better) example. Tycho's writing is simply fantastic. And insanely detailed. Most items in the environment can be examined, adventure-game style (the game is really a JRPG/adventure fusion), and every single one has 1-2 lines of unique descriptor text. And I mean every single one. Not like, all crabs have the same description. I mean like there's, say, 50 crabs scattered around the world and each individual one has one or (usually) two totally unique and awesome text boxes. Yes. Insane(ly pimp).

Combat) JRPG combat usually sucks too. Primarily I hate the Dragon Quest/EarthBound-style and secondarily the Final Fantasy-style. It's too simple, too boring, and highly non-interactive and non-interesting. Real-timey stuff is all the rage in JRPG these days, but those are usually too frenetic and rely on uncontrollable AI party members. But I really dug the PAAOtRSPoDE1 combat, JRPG as it is. Firstly, it removes a bunch of the annoying micromanagement of HP and MP. Your HP auto-refills after every battle and all the recovery items are % based, so even the weakest bandage never gets totally useless. There is no MP. Actions are all sequentially tiered on a constantly filling up bar. So after a bit you can use an item, a little later you can do a standard attack, and waiting longer grants you a special attack. Once you do something, it completely resets and you're back to item-only. Balanced between three characters filling like this, it feels quick and active but you still get complete control over everybody. It also makes for interesting choices (the fundamental key of gaming). Use your weak attack? Or hold out for a special, even though you're almost dead? There are also multiple summons that very slowly fill in this same way, maintaing their fill-up between battles. The system also nicks a few good mechanics from the classics. You've got defensive button pressing on enemy attacks (à la SMRPG), unique double and triple-tech-type special-attack team-ups when multiple people have specials charged (à la Chrono Trigger), items and attacks that can hit multiple enemies depending on their actual placement (à la Chrono Trigger again) and micro-games to determine special attack damage (à la Paper Mario). You can see enemies in the world before you fight (no random battles), fight them where you actually are without warping to a generic location, and corpses even actually stay in the field after battle(!). Great enemies too -- mimes, hobos, Elder Gods, barbershop quartets, what more could you want?

Futhermore) So those are the two main reasons this JRPG succeeds where most fail. But almost every other detail is superb, too. Each character, NPC, enemy, quest, and item has wonderful descriptions, stats, and attack lists in a dossier. The cutscenes are gorgeous animated 2D in the Gabe style. The music is well-done and appropriate. The voice actor is top-notch. The character creator seemed a bit limited at first, but then it turned my guy into a majorly rad 2D version and I fell in love (probably my favorite created character ever). The only small flaws are that the respawning-containers item collection is a bit weird (a by-product of JRPG system in a relatively small adventure game-style world) and that the carnival mini-games you can play are a bit weak. Oh, and if you're worried, you don't need any Penny Arcade knowledge to enjoy this. It's a self-contained world where everything just happens to resemble counterparts from a different dimension (see: Ocarina of Time vs. Majora's Mask). Not like Penny Arcade has real continuity anyway. :)

So yeah, this corn is cracklin'. Highest recommendation. Buy it. Then wait for Ep 2.

115

Fan Creations / my best friend

« on: May 18, 2008, 03:06:13 AM »

Seeing this post in a thread about Pixar movies inspired me to make one of my usual picture+song webpages.

But then BAM I kicked it up a notch.

116

Video Game Chat / LostWinds

« on: May 14, 2008, 05:51:24 AM »

Finished LostWinds today. It was shorter than I expected (~3 hours) and appears to be the first in an episodic series, even though no marketing or previews seemed to mention this. It's basically a small Metroidvania with one continuous map for the whole game and a few upgrades. The graphics are fairly pretty outdoors, but you do spend a decent amount of time in your basic caves and mines. With only three enemy types (Glorbs!) and a couple of different doodads used in puzzles, the world is also pretty sparse.

The wind powers are kind of cool, but aside from the final upgrade, they are really just complicated ways to do basic game moves (double-jump, throw stuff). Feels nifty for awhile, though, and the game goes into a cool bullet-time effect when you draw paths onscreen. Just moving the cursor around also creates directional wind effects on most everything, backgrounds included. Good sound, too. The greatest achievement of this whole game is probably how "windy" the cursor feels.

The normal music is peaceful and fitting, but whenever an enemy is in the screen it changes to annoying battle music. This is a bad idea in a 2D platformer.

There are these blue fairies that fly out of defeated enemies and rustled plants. You can collect them by pointing at them (like Star Bits) and they fill three squares next to your health heart. However, I read the entire manual and beat the game without discovering what the point was. At first I thought it was going to be mana for some power I didn't have yet, but that never happened. Near the end I started to suspect it would do something if I died, but I never went below 1/4 heart.

I also collected 19/24 little statue things, which also did completely nothing the entire game and were never mentioned by the manual or any NPC.

117

Site Discussion / Fixed.

« on: May 09, 2008, 04:07:23 AM »

Okay people, enough with the fixing of quotes. It has to stop. Every page of every thread I go to has at least one but usually more. They're rarely funny and usually just a boring correction you could have used big people words to explain.

And I'm well-aware someone is going to fix this very post. You're hilarious.

118

Fan Creations / IT IS COMING

« on: March 27, 2008, 07:08:27 PM »

MRtrailer.wmv

119

Video Game Chat / The Capriole Conundrum

« on: March 11, 2008, 09:04:36 PM »

I saw a lot of people in Favorite Brawl Control Scheme mention using X to jump. That made me think, "You people are crazy! You're supposed to use Y to jump!" Because that's what I do. I use Y to jump.

In this thread, tell me what freakish button you use to jump. Go on, I can take it.

120

Friend Codes / Endless Ocean - Friend Codes

« on: January 28, 2008, 04:13:55 AM »

A friend forced me to agree to buy this to play multi with him (like a year ago). Well it came out. This game is suuuuuper peaceful. It's pretty cool if you're in the right mood. It is also only $30.


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