What Are You Playing (Fall 2012)

[MechDeus]

Metal Storm - Alright, I'm cruising along, surprising easy but super inventive and really fuck awesome stage design. Then, out of nowhere, the stage 5 boss refuses to give up. Oh, my first pattern was easy? How about I transform into something trickier? Oh, that form can be cheesed? How about one that requires some gravity hopping? Oh, that one's also easy but takes longer? How about ALL THREE FORMS AT THE SAME TIME WITH TWICE THE AMOUNT OF SHOTS FROM EACH ONE?

How about fuck you?

This game is awesome.

Holy Diver - This game seems designed to just piss people off. First there's an endless respawn onslaught of an enemy that's basically a combination of Castlevania's Medusa heads and fleas, and then they follow it up with dragons that can wreck a lifebar and take a ton of hits as normal enemies while asshole bats rain down shots from above. It's not that hard once each area is mapped out, and single enemies that are lured away don't respawn when the screen scrolls back like they would in Mega Man or Ninja Gaiden so it's not as bad as it first seems. The game just feels like brick wall central every time I hit something new.

Then I clear it and it feels good man.

[A Robot Bit Me]

Metal Storm's level design is not of this world. To play it is to see the face of God.

I've been playing Burnout 1 and 2 all weekend. They are still great. I'm not going to say they are better games than NFS: HP or Burnout Revenge, but they aren't obsolete either. There is a purity and economy to them that the contemporary Criterion games with all their fancy pants modes and mechanics lack. That, and Burnout 1 is hard as hell comparatively, often unfairly so. Still kind of neat, though.

[Yoshi]

Irem is gone and yet Ninja Theory draws breath.

[MechDeus]

Metal Storm's level design is not of this world. To play it is to see the face of God.

It truly is. I beat the stage 5 boss by getting a powerup that I thought was too risky to grab but actually turned out to be very easy (and then wrecked the boss in seconds), and then stage 6 was like damn.

And how about those faux parallax backgrounds? This thing is amazing.

Irem is gone and yet Ninja Theory draws breath.

I don't know, I'm looking through their back catalogue and there's a couple possible gems I haven't played (like Steambot Chronicles) but it seems pretty downhill after 1991.



Someone should remake Metal Storm with awesome pixel art. It would be the best game.

[Nash]

Halo 4 (Xbox 360)

Being a big Halo fan, I was going to play this and I was going to enjoy it, even though I was expecting pretty much the same thing as all the previous games in the series. I was wrong, though. This game feels fresh. It's not just the graphical facelift, which is gorgeous. It's everything about this game --- new graphics, new storyline, new world, new weapons, new environments. It's Halo, but it's kind of not. The feeling I get from playing this game is the same feeling I got when I first played Metroid Prime. There's a familiarity to it, but it's different from what you're used to. I'm not very far in, but this could be the best in the series.

[MechDeus]

Music and rhythm go time!

DJ Hero - Received this in fantastic condition from Jimmy, and while I like it I think I can see why it didn't do so hot. It's neither the pick up and play of Guitar Hero nor does it have the depth of Beatmania, and seems like you would need to already be a fan of mash-ups going into it. I'm not sure it really fills any void in the music game genre but it's a neat little thing. Haven't cracked open the sequel yet.

Dance Central - SSJN gave me the first and I'm probably only going to use it to import songs because it kind of sucks. What's with this whole not having simultaneous 2-player? I thought we left that shit behind with SMB1 and Rush N Attack. Fucking garbage. Right after we tried the demos my girl ordered DC3 since it was 50% off on Cyber Monday and it is ridiculously better. I like that there's a calorie tracking mode but it needs more 2NE1 and could use some Girls Generation.

[Pineapple]

Cleaning up and replaying old games, I turned on Beyond Good and Evil HD and decided to give it another chance. Popped my second achievement and went to look at it, and it turns out I bought the game exactly one year ago today. That struck me as pretty weird, but apparently 11/30 is BGaE day.

[Rumpy]

I've been meaning to get back to that too.

[A Robot Bit Me]

Started playing X-COM: UFO Defense. This is overwhelming. I've played a little of the old Civ, Sim, and Age of Empires games, but nothing of this scope. Final Fantasy Tactics looks like a Mario Party minigame in the face of this thing.

Intercepting the UFOs leaves much to chance right now. I'm hoping it becomes more nuanced as I beef up my fleet and research alien tech. The ground battles are incredible. Never played anything quite like it.

[bVork]

Swap out the default Interceptor weapons with a pair of Avalanche missile launchers and early interceptions will be much easier.