New & Upcoming game discussion.

[Mr.]

Mesk, you should play Demon's/Dark Souls. And everyone else for that matter. They are both pretty amazing. I think I would recommend Dark Souls over Demon's, though, because it's newer, and they made some improvements. As well as the fact that the multiplayer servers have been shut down for Demon's Souls. So I'm pretty much going to be talking about Dark Souls, but just about everything will also apply to Demon's.

It's a very brutal game. At least, until you learn how to play it, and figure out what things you should do and what things you shouldn't. So the difficulty is not frustrating, so much as rewarding. You aren't getting killed repeatedly because of some buggy attack, or awful camera angle, you're getting killed repeatedly because you're trying to fight a demon that's 20 times as big as you, and is on fire, and is eating your face. And when you finally kill it, it's satisfying, and you want to keep finding more giant things to get murdered by. Okay, Bed of Chaos is a shitty "boss fight," but other than that, they're great.

I also really like the look and feel of the game. I don't know if the textures are high enough resolution, or whatever, but the art direction is pretty damn great. All of the enemies you fight, the areas you explore, the weapons and armor you equip, they all look great.


(Actual in-game graphics)

Anyway, it's a great game. A great variety of weapons and armor, which actually play vastly differently. Knives, straight swords, spears, claymores, greataxes, halberds, clubs, giant hammers... they all work differently and can be effective based on your character's stats and your abilities. I made three characters so far, the first was just a whatever character, I was playing the game for the first time, exploring everything, no particular specialties. But my second character was pure sorcery, and I did a lot of co-op multiplayer, helping people to murder bosses. My third character was a giant tank with a huge freaking sword, who enjoyed invading other players' games, and murdering them.

Oh yeah, the multiplayer. It's pretty fun. You can either let other players summon you into their world to help fight bosses, or you can force yourself into another player's world to destroy them or be destroyed in PvP.

All in all, I'd highly recommend this game, it is a very unique game. It is not without its flaws (lol Lost Izalith), but it is a very well-made game, created with lots of care. If you're tired of playing the same games over and over again, play Dark Souls.

[Mucky]

You liked Earthbound? Definitely should look into Seiken Densetsu 3 for the SNES. There's an unofficial translation ROM floating around (it was never released in the US). I don't want to spoil anything about the game, so I'll just say some general things about it:

- Out of 6 characters, you pick 3. How the game's plot flows, which areas you explore, which bosses you fight, etc. are determined by the characters you pick at the start of a new game. The characters you didn't pick will still find ways to get involved, though it's usually a brief appearance.
- No random encounters; it's more like an Action RPG where dudes appear and you just kill them without any transitioning in and out of battles. You control one character while the AI controls the other two.
- After leveling up enough times, your characters have classes which branch off from the one they start out as. Someone who is a purebred fighter can become a fighter/healer hybrid, or a ridiculously powerful fighter.
- Two people can play at the same time. IIRC, only player 1 can decide where the party goes, but player 2 can control a separate character during fights.

For an RPG, the game has immense replayability. At the same time, you don't have to play through it multiple times to get the whole story. Try it out sometime.

EDIT: ohi bill

[IskatuMesk]

Mesk, you should play Demon's/Dark Souls. And everyone else for that matter.

I own both of these and I bought both of them planning to LP them sometime. I have heard good things about them and saw HKS play a short bit of Demon's Souls and it looked like it should be entertaining. Actually, watching that was one of the things that really pushed me into wanting to make my own ARPG in the UDK, because the atmosphere was pretty convincing. Perhaps after my hand feels better and I finish GoW2 I will think about starting on this series before GoW3. Depends what I feel like.

play Dark Souls.

I definitely into to. TL spoke very highly of it and it definitely looks like my kind of game.

You liked Earthbound? Definitely should look into Seiken Densetsu 3 for the SNES. There's an unofficial translation ROM floating around (it was never released in the US). I don't want to spoil anything about the game, so I'll just say some general things about it:

The name seems familiar. I know I was sent what I believe was an SNES game that was compared to Diablo (as in Diablo would have been based on it mechanically) and it was Japanese-only (thus fan translated). I am curious if it's one and the same, I will have to look into it in the future. They sound very similar from the descriptions so it's possible. I am very interested to see this style of gameplay on the SNES.

[Mr.]

Sup Mucky. Hey, isn't Seiken Densetsu 3 related to Secret of Mana? I seem to vaguely recall that they're the same series, and what you described pretty much sounds like Secret of Mana. Which was a pretty cool game. I should check that out sometime.

Mesk, if you LP Dark Souls, you should totally have me guest as a phantom. If that is possible. The way the co-op works, it's a little difficult to actually arrange a meeting with a certain player, but I believe it is possible. I have put way too many hours into that game, so I'm familiar with almost all of it. And it would be great to have an excuse to play it again.

[Linaze]

Seiken Densetsu 3 is the stand-alone sequel to Secret of Mana. It's a really good game, do check it out.

[Falchion]

As I previously stated, the game would have to be VERY appealing for me so I could check it out. And, given that nothing new will come by the end of the year, figures I could speak of a recent one which I've been accompanying with.



Batman: Arkham City.

Beforehand into the long stuff, a few facts to be known:

- BAC is a console port, much like most else games is or will be. (80%, in fact, given SC II was the ONLY native PC title.)
- It's a Western game, made by Western people, with Western sounds and voice acting.
- Doesn't have any gore or heavy, adult foul words (Beyond bitch, I mean).

Therefore, pretty much like most things, Arkham City is slated to be the Game Of The Year by the moronic standards of Americans. I simply felt it was a decent stuff, but opinions are left to you.

Graphics:

Arkham City runs pretty much on the Unreal engine, like it's predecessor. Also, being a console port, graphics don't abuse very much of the modern graphic cards, being too conservative on normal and texture mapping. Still, compared to Arkham Asylum (And I DID play it!), it was an overall improvement, especially lightning and atmospherics. On atmospherics, in other words, the exterior, I thought there was some actual effort put into it. Unfortunately, you learn you don't always get what you want, and that is quality: Developers, in the name of the bloodsucking console industry, got soft on texturing, jarring alot of design and immersion it could've achieved on PC.

It simply seems trying to approach reality gets over-valued a bit too much...

But, concerning details, Rocksteady worked hard on making each one as unique as possible. That I feel as a positive change.

Also, as a positive change, I think the animations are far superior and more fluid than BAA, especially fighting sequences. Somehow, I have this suspicion BAC was partially mocapped...

One thing I didn't like, however, is Rocksteady hypocrisy in speaking of this 'Open World' feature, which I haven't seen nothing of it. It's the same freedom of movement as in Arkham Asylum, with the only difference of additional scale put in. By open world, I mean you could travel to OUTSIDE Arkham City, straight into Gotham and then outside it. You could enter ANY building you wanted. But then, it'd deliver an absurd amount of memory space requirement. Still, didn't like their rumbling about it, it's more of a rather loosened leash than a gone one altogether.


Audio:

I haven't actually seen ANY of Arkham City's soundtracks, only from Arkham Asylum, but, judging from the few bits and pieces I've heard, it's a small improvement. Obviously it's American, but at least it doesn't have rock or eletronic themes into it, it'd ruin it. At least, soundtrack takes itself a bit seriously.

American too is the voice acting, but, compared to Starcraft II, it's elevated, but for only one degree. Actual actors still lack emotional detachment, primary ones are dull and read-only while secondaries have actual content. Kind of inversed papers where primaries would NORMALLY be valued first.

Unfortunately, the other sounds could've used some effort. Some are bland, some are ill-edited, others don't even exist. Sounds like full laziness of Rocksteady's audio engineers, on Blizzard level. Typical...


Gameplay:

One of Arkham City's strongest points is gameplay, foremost combat. Despite the problem of being simplistic, combat is fluid, easy and not so clunky, with the exception of a few blockouts. By those, I mean when you try to takedown a downed bad guy, but another comes close, you try to counter him, but you can't. This is far prejudicial and even prevents downed takedowns. Other than that, additional combos like throwing batarangs during a fight is rather fun, and bandits screaming are hilarious.

Exploration and riddle-solving is fine, even with the new inclusions of diving head-on to the ground (Which I wanted to make Batman die to cranial fracture, but I couldn't. *snif*). Gadgets are multiple and can be used for either situation.

But the real fun, truly, for me, is Predator gameplay (vs. Armed guys.) Options are unlimited and you can either do air strikes at all turns, hang a dude at a gargoyle and then batarang the rope to see him fall for fun (Did it in Asylum, yay!), explode a wall. Fun unlimited.

Unfortunately, the real letdown was the boss fights. They were TOO FUCKING EASY. It was simply 'Do A, avoid attack, do B, back to A, do C, do D, avoid attack, repeat'. There's your boss fights. Actually, only one required some effort. (And you who've seen it know who am I talking about.)


Writing:

Typical Good X Evil with some conspiracy and cliché put into it. Simple as that. Other than that you won't find. The actors simply improved the story, but by a degree alone. Stories like 'Catherine' and 'Corpse Party' belong only to Easterns, I fear. Shameful, but true...


Conclusion:

Game Of The Year title, for me, is a game that truly DESERVES it, and BAC was simply decent. Just that. What propelled the game for it was the name BATMAN, a thing every casual loves. I doubt it'd even sell if there was no Batman to it...

[Lavarinth]

Western voice acting? But they're using all the original character's voices that were available from the animated cartoon series.. Pretty sure Arkham City and Arkham Asylum could do not better in regards to voice acting due to the fact it's superb in my book.

[IskatuMesk]

Blame Canada.

[HelpMe]

Oh Earthbound how I love thee. You make Chrono Trigger look like a pile of turd. All hail Earthbound, the best game on SNES platform.

I need to get around to playing Secret of Mana 2 as well. Exceptional game.

[wibod]

HURR DURR NOT JAPANESE ANIME KAWAII UGU

Your caboose seems to be clobbered, should get that checked out.

[mark_009_vn]

The first ever gaming company in VIETNAM just announced the release date of their first ever "real" FPS game for the PC. It is called Operation: 7554 (Or just 7554), and it is by far the most decent looking Money Welfare™ clone I've ever seen. It took place upon the early parts of the Vietnam war and it is also the first game in the world that allow you to fight THE FRENCH!!!

Main site:
http://www.emobigames.vn/EN/Games/7554.html

Video trailer, fan edited. (Warning, might contain Mark Zimmery!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hweAJXKAa84

A very old tech demo video, the terrain and level designs looks like it's going to be 10 billion times more epic than
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Lt89MiuvKc&feature=player_embedded

Teaser samples for some of the music tracks in the game. Note: some of the tracks, especially combat tracks are of orchestral/metal combination.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k89DrR5lRQg&feature=related

Gameplay footage from the demo version. Requires A LOT more polish but looks decent enough.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8i7_1A4tjA&feature=related

[RazorclawX]

Xenoblade Chronicles is getting released in the US.

As someone who's loved the soundtrack I'm excited and relieved this is finally happening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7Xc6in86rs

[IskatuMesk]

Interesting. I always thought Xenoblade was already available for US but I guess it wasn't. I am definitely going to be looking into this.

And yes, the soundtrack is awesome.

[wibod]

The first ever gaming company in VIETNAM just announced the release date of their first ever "real" FPS game for the PC. It is called Operation: 7554 (Or just 7554), and it is by far the most decent looking Money Welfare™ clone I've ever seen. It took place upon the early parts of the Vietnam war and it is also the first game in the world that allow you to fight THE FRENCH!!!

Bro, I've been killing the french in vidya since at least the 90s, you need to play something other than FPS.

[UntamedLoli]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9mUe5vHYzs

lol the fallen star being the wrong colour.