Thats what I was thinking, but I thought no way could it do something that awful. Holy mother of god I hate that game even more. Because its a fun game that compels you to play it, only to piss you off greatly. And I played it on an emulator, and it was still a pain.
Isn't there like some other item that you need in order to actually beat the final boss, too?
I think you need like a super lance or something - I can't remember.
Does anyone remember that X-Men game for Sega Genesis where when you get to this one part of the game you have to reset the console to continue on? And it gives you no indication that that's what you're supposed to do?
from wikipedia:
Resetting the Computer
At the time, this game is one of few games which break the 4th wall. Once Mojo is defeated, the player must "reset the computer" for the Danger Room to stop the virus being emitted on Mojo's level. However, there are no switches for doing so. Resetting the computer is meant to be literal, in that the player has to lightly press the reset button on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis console before the time ran out. If executed well, the game will display digits as if a computer has been reset.
Although unique, this trick was widely panned by both video game magazine critics and consumers. Holding down the reset button too long would simply reset the system as one would normally expect. This also makes the game impossible to complete when playing on the Sega Nomad without using a level select cheat, as the portable Sega Mega Drive/Genesis has no reset button.
nathan smart!
http://www.nathansmart.com
...you need the magic braceletOriginally Posted by SlyBattery
I used to be able to go through Ghouls N Ghosts on the Genesis (both run-throughs) on one credit. I downloaded the Virtual Console version and I couldn't even get past the first level because of my dulled old man reflexes :b
BTW, there is a Heavy Rain demo up on the PSN store.
Hong Kong Film Net
http://www.hkfilm.net
So, Kotaku hipped me to this Glyde thing. I'm now considering purchasing some games that I wasn't even thinking of getting because I couldn't find them (even on ebay) for less than $50ish. Arkham Asylum for $33? Borderlands for similar? Totally do-able. What an awesome service.
Oh snap! That seems pretty awesome actually. I should sell a couple games on there to see how the service performs...I have a couple games I could ditch.
I wouldn't say BioShock 2 is a bad game, but it really suffers from having to follow a game that was really kind of surprising and new. It just doesn't have that same wow factor. I think it was really a mistake to keep it in Rapture. It's just more of the same, it really just feels like DLC content for BioShock 1 to me. I wish they would have changed settings.
My friend just lent me his copy of The Saboteur. I don't know how this fly under the radar as much as it did but it is a very fun game. Open world, plenty of things to destroy, a story that doesn't take itself too seriously or get too campy either. The perfect definition of a time waster. Really enjoyable.
I liked it for about 4 or 5 hours, and then just really didn't... I got to a point where I just couldn't beat it, breaking some dude out of jail. Tried forever because I liked the rest of it. It's definitely fun just messing with Nazi's.
I finished Uncharted 2. It's a fun game, I just wish the ratio of stealth/shootout scenes to climbing/"puzzle" scenes were weighted more in favor of the former -- climbing around just felt like tedious work and the game's idea of a puzzle sucks (it's not a puzzle if the solution involves opening your journal and flipping to the right page for the answer). And I also felt the ratio of cut scenes to play-time was off -- just when I was getting into a nice gaming zone, a cut scene would come along and interrupt my play.
I have a thousand nitpicks for this game, but if it hadn't been billed as the game of the year and a five-star masterpiece I probably would've just played it and enjoyed it for what it was. Anyway, here are the nitpicks:
Structurally, it's very weird and confusing that when we catch back up to the present (the train-on-a-cliff scene), that isn't the beginning of the end of the game -- in movies, the device of showing an action scene, then jumping back and showing what led to it almost always brings us back to the "present" at the start of act III. Here, there might've been more game after this point than before, or it might've been about 50/50. Either way, from the second-take cliff-train scene on, I kept expecting the story to wrap up (it doesn't help that there is one magnificent temple after another in this game, making nearly every scene feel like the grand finale). I can't tell you how many times I thought I had reached Shambala and/or found the Chintimani Stone, only for another door to open and another level to begin. (And shouldn't these fucking characters be more impressed by the amazing artifacts they're constantly discovering on their journey? Instead it's like, "Oh, huh, ten-thousand-year-old bronze prayer wheel the size of a school bus... Anyway, let me crack another joke about this chick's ass.")
The first scene with the Zombie Yeti-Mtn Goat monster is ridiculous: I died about 10 times trying to beat that stupid thing before I accidentally must have been in the right spot or just gotten locked up with him enough times to trigger the cut scene, in which the boss you've been fighting is stabbed or shot (I forget) by your sherpa and just runs away. First of all, it's incredibly frustrating when 20 bullets won't kill a villain, but it's even worse when the scene ends and you don't even get to defeat this thing. Then, later, you learn that only crossbows can really take these fucking things out (okay, so grenades and heavy artillery work too, but one fucking arrow is apparently the equivalent of 100 rounds from a gatling gun in this world). Oh, except for at the end of the game, when you're sliding down a collapsing bridge and a few shots from a puny handgun kill the guarding choking Chloe (God, even the names in this game are wrong: the blonde reporter is more of a "Chloe," and the dark-haired bad girl who can't be trusted is much more of an "Elena"). My point is, the game made me feel stupid for looking for a solution to beating the Yeti when it turned out I was meant to just survive long enough for the plot to advance.
There are so many moments like that in this game, where it turns out whatever effort you put into beating a bad guy really was irrelevant, because once the game decides you've put in enough work, it just goes into cut scene mode and wraps up whatever you were doing without your direct involvement. I hate that. Let me succeed or fail at the task this guy is trying to complete. I want the satisfaction of achieving something -- isn't that the point of playing a game?
Part of the annoyance of the climbing portions of the game is that I felt like what was possible and what wasn't shifted throughout the game. Unlike other games, where there are a few ways to accomplish something, in Uncharted there's only one way, and they will block you from doing it any other way, even if in a similar situation earlier, you could've done it that other way. Like when there's a ledge you could clearly boost your friend up onto, only that's not how they want you to get to the goal, so you can't even give your friend a boost. Or how about when you have to throw a propane tank onto a car in the middle of a river and blast it to move the car into a position to help you cross the river? That is something you have never done previously in the game, and never do again. Hence, when you get there, the game has to give you a "Hint" -- which is a horrible cop-out solution the designers used when they realized that certain parts of the game were going to be impossible for the gamer to figure out on his own. (It's impossible because in most cases there are so few things you can actually do to interact with the environment that when you suddenly can, it comes out of nowhere and needs to be explained.)
What is really awful about the "Hint" thing is that it's completely intrusive -- the word "hint" won't disappear from the screen until you take the hint -- and yet it makes you feel like a failure for needing a hint. So the game punishes you for its shortcomings. There's a scene in the monastery near the end, shortly before you enter Shambala, where they give you the "hint" that you have to climb up to a window. What offended me about this is that there was a pile of dirt in front of the door below the window that my grandmother could climb, but world-famous ledge-leaper Nathan Drake can't seem to manage it. No, he has to find the most convoluted path imaginable and nearly die jumping across open gaps to get there. I know, it's a game -- and maybe I wouldn't mind that kind of thing as much if I felt it took any ingenuity or cleverness to find the path, or if it were more fun to execute these climbs and jumps. As it was, I always felt the solutions were arbitrary and the control mechanics were clunky and poorly timed.
One of the things I hate about these linear movie-games is that they are always rushing you, both explicitly (characters literally yelling, "Come on! Hurry up!" at you while you're playing) and implicitly (there's a bad guy doing something evil up ahead, so you better hurry and stop him! Oh and also, the floor you're standing on is crumbling, so keep moving!). I like to take my time playing a game, explore every corner of it and figure out what's possible before choosing a course of action. That just isn't possible in a game like this (but luckily, there's usually only one path to follow anyway, so at least I don't feel like I'm missing much). But then the game has the gall to hide little treasures you're meant to be collecting along the way. REALLY?! So I should take a detour from this guy shooting missiles at me to pick up a necklace that has nothing to do with anything, and if I don't I somehow didn't fully complete the game? Fuck YOU! (This is somewhat true in Batman, but the big difference is that Batman takes place in one location, and you can spend all the time you want there collecting things after the Joker has been defeated -- and I did, because by then, I was hooked on the gameplay. I have no interest in playing through Uncharted 2 again to find whatever trinkets I failed to collect.)
Oh, and how about when you're chasing the bad guy and his army into the monastery: how the fuck are they all getting where they're going when you're forced to swing across chasms and scale walls to do the same? At least show them blowing up a bridge after they use it or something. There were innumerable times when you would come across a bad guy in a place that it later turns out he would've had to parachute to, because the surrounding rooms are missing floors or the doors are barricaded. Cheesy.
But yeah, I enjoyed it. Fun game.
I mean you keep saying that you had fun playing it but all of your complaints seem to be with the genre that they've created rather than the game itself.
nathan smart!
http://www.nathansmart.com
Isos, I'm not sure you are a fan of video games.
DaggerofChrist unmasked
I generally look at the Uncharted series as an example of how to use tropes well. Is some of it trite? Sure. But effective. And most importantly: fun.
I think isos is saying that uncharted falls far more into the "experience" category than the "game" category.
By that, I mean it seems to be a very distilled journey where the game designers want you to do a specific thing at a specific place. You can't solve a puzzle or get from point A to be B in any other way than the designers want you to.
While that means you get to do a lot of cool shit, it also means that you don't really get the satisfaction of figuring something out for yourself.
The "hint" system seems more like a "now do this" system than a hint. Unless the game establishes certain mechanics and lets you play around with them, you're just kind of doing what they tell you. I can see how that can be frustrating. How are you supposed to know that you can throw a propain tank into a car unless they tell you? You do get the satisfaction of blowing up the car, but the satisfaction of knowing that you achieved an objective on your own. It seems like hand holding by design.
Seems like valid criticism to me, and not a genre complaint at all. Well, the getting from A to B thing kind of is, but there are more and more games introducing different pathways.
(I haven't played uncharted 1 or 2, mind you.)
I'm a MAN, dammit!
Yes. And? I'm saying it's fun for what it is, but to me what it is does not compare well to games that give you more interactivity, more freedom and more choice. It makes all kinds of sacrifices, presumably to be more like a movie, which I don't think is a worthy pursuit in video game design. If you want to make a movie, make a movie. If you want to give us the experience of being a character in a movie, then create the world and let us run around and play in it.
I have plenty of complaints about the game itself, some of which I mentioned in that last post and many of which I covered earlier. Controls, mainly.
Is anyone else playing Bioshock 2 on PC? If so does anyone want to play multiplayer together once they fix the lag issues caused by the new patch?
"I'm the best detective in this room." -Jimmy Pardo
By the way, I just played the Heavy Rain demo, which makes Uncharted 2 look like an MMORPG. Holy shit is that boring and pointless. Do you like randomly and intermittently pressing buttons while watching bad '80s noir movies on Cinemax? Do you enjoy the game Simon and wish you had to play it every time you wanted to open your refrigerator? Do you hate it when things are lit? Then this is the "game" for you! (No exaggeration: at one point you have to press six different buttons to climb a muddy hill.)
Eh. Heavy Rain seems to be a mixture of a few older game genres that have lost popularity. It seems to be have a bit of the old FMV base games of the PC (like Ripper or Phantasmagoria), the "interactive movie" bits of Dragon's Lair, and the approach of Shenmue, in terms of something like "explore this house" or "walk around this mall".
I don't think it is going to have a wide appeal since it is a type of gameplay that really died out in the mid 90's. I know that my own interest in the game comes less from the way it is played and the effects that your choices will have on the story. To my understanding, there are wildly different occurences that can happen, especially in the endgame. That is something that interest me. I might seem more like a giant interactive "choose your own adventure" but I have less of an issue with that I guess since I already have a bunch of games I can toss in if I want a sandbox experience or an online frag fest.
I don't think FMV games were ever really popular. It was a weird fad that caught on for a little while before everyone realized how bad it was. What was that weird Dana Plato game?
Winter is Coming: Summer 2011.
Yeah, it reminded me of those first SegaCD games -- which I never played even though I had the system because they looked so horrible. I think Corey Haim was in one of them?
Looking back, I don't know how (or more importantly why) I made it through Shenmue, and even came away from it liking it. I guess it was Stockholm Syndrome: after spending so much time with it, I had to defend it.
If you're into interactive stories, then I guess this could be cool. It just seems like the actual story in games like these always end up being shit. It's hard enough to tell a good story when all you have to do is write it out using words -- adding the complexities and demands of a video game production only makes it harder. (You can say the same for movies, but they've been pretty much making those the same way for 100 years -- video games are still in their infancy in terms of the methods of production, and those methods are constantly evolving.)
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