What Are You Playing (Summer 2011)

[YellerDog]

Gargoyle's Quest, Shantae: Risky's Revenge, Link's Awakening, SSFIV 3DS.

Street Fighter is some ol' bullshit online, the auto-block people are using is disgustingly good (no penalty whatsoever, catches all), the one-button specials (like walk-forward no charge Sonic Booms) are big trouble too. Still, fun to beat up on people using Hakan and see them quit INSTANTLY when you win.

Link's Awakening I find myself hopping on FAQs to get through, a lot of those Game Boy-era objectives are a little more 'look at every screen in the game to use your new item in one specific place" than I'd like to put the time in to. Still, feels like the SNES game.

Gargoyle's Quest is great, never played it before! Was huge into Demon's Crest though, and this is very much that.

Shante's cool, best part of the game is answering "no" when the dialog gives you the option.

[Mzo]

I think the auto-blocking makes them take fake damage just like a focus would, but you still have to land a hit afterward to solidify it.

Or maybe it doesn't at all, but the Guile abusers are such nasty bullshit that it makes the game near unplayable. That and the horrible controls. Still a neat novelty.

[YellerDog]

I think the auto-blocking makes them take fake damage just like a focus would, but you still have to land a hit afterward to solidify it.

Or maybe it doesn't at all, but the Guile abusers are such nasty bullshit that it makes the game near unplayable. That and the horrible controls. Still a neat novelty.

It's cool that it's more or less exactly the same game except appropriately scaled down; I don't think anything is really missing from the console release as far as the movelist goes, so that's nice.

They do take a tiny bit of focus damage, but I believe anything you do still puts them at a pretty stiff advantage. Totally different properties from a normal block somehow, consecutive hits get auto-blocked, armor breaks and reversals get shrugged off too... Turns into a game of "throw them however possible" >:O

Legit good players abusing auto block is soooo dumb, but what can you do?

[Mzo]

The 3D effect is pretty impressive, too. It's not just layers, it's like characters' limbs are divided up into the foreground and background. I don't regret buying it and I can kind of pull off some chun stuff with the touch buttons, but it's frustrating. Usually the abusers online are so bad that they don't realize spamming specials isn't safe so you can beat them anyway, the problem comes when someone has rudimentary knowledge of the game and chooses the dark side of the Guile.

[YellerDog]

The night-time Blanka stage with the 3D fireflies is pretty.

[Schlep]

Started up Mass Effect yesterday. So this is what I've been missing.

[MechDeus]

Psychonauts - Was replaying this to see if it was as I remembered, and it 100% is. The writing is still really great (though there's a few annoying-as-fuck characters) and the game is still a horrendous mash of mediocre and boring gameplay programmed by incompetent morons. There's so many inconsistencies, glitches, terrible level designs, and things that have no purpose other than to annoy the player I'm almost surprised this finally got published. It feels like the beta code got released by accident. I kind of want to see if Brutal Legend is any better but I also don't want to spend money on it, so I'll probably never know.

Dungeon Fighter Online - Played a bit of this for shits and giggles to see how it was and it's not as bad as I thought it would be, though the designers seem functionally retarded. It came out in 2005 but somehow only runs in 640x480, and there are no options for resizing beyond fullscreen (which means stretched out on my widescreen) or teeny tiny window. The game also got controller support patched in a long time ago but it doesn't recognize analog triggers or hat switches, so things like the 360 controller don't really work. Both of these issues can be solved with third-party programs, but it's pretty basic shit that should already be in there.

Still, I find it works better with a joystick anyway since the motions are MK-esque directions instead of rolling, so sharp response is really needed. I like how they made it where you can hotkey all the different attacks, but they also all have inputs similar to a fighting game so you can also play with only four buttons total. It's neat, if really grindy.

Street Fighter IV - Started playing a little of this again and I am like a retarded child at it. I just ordered replacement innards for my stick so that it'll respond properly (including an octo gate whee), which was more than I wanted to spend but whatever. Might buy SFIII when that stuff arrives.

[GohanX]

That description for Psychonauts describes Brutal Legend pretty well too. I still enjoyed it, and it's what, $5 these days?

[MechDeus]

The best thing to happen to Double Fine was for them to essentially have their full-sized console release rights revoked.

As for Brutal Legend, find me a copy for $5 and I'll think about it. Amazon has some but the shipping costs more than the game itself.

[bbobb]

Psychonauts - Was replaying this to see if it was as I remembered, and it 100% is. The writing is still really great (though there's a few annoying-as-fuck characters) and the game is still a horrendous mash of mediocre and boring gameplay programmed by incompetent morons. There's so many inconsistencies, glitches, terrible level designs, and things that have no purpose other than to annoy the player I'm almost surprised this finally got published. It feels like the beta code got released by accident. I kind of want to see if Brutal Legend is any better but I also don't want to spend money on it, so I'll probably never know.

Brutal Legend is worse. Don't bother. I still love Psychonauts, aside from the meat circus it's not TOO horrible to play.

But I agree that the world is a better place with Double Fine not making retail games now. Their dl games have been great so far.