What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[atheistgod1999]

Gonna bump my question:

You only have to kill one of them to progress.

use poison, or the baby's nail you might've picked up from 3-1

I assume you didn't beat the boss cause you'd be splurging about it.

Where do I get poison? Should I get the poison cloud, or are spells bought with demon's souls only one-time uses?

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

You probably shouldn't try to do the tunnels if you can't kill the giant bugs. Keep playing other levels and you'll get weapons capable of killing the giant bugs soon enough.

[atheistgod1999]

You probably shouldn't try to do the tunnels if you can't kill the giant bugs. Keep playing other levels and you'll get weapons capable of killing the giant bugs soon enough.

I can kill them, but it takes like 2 minutes with a curved sword or spear.

[ryu]

Spells learned from boss souls can be used over and over as long as you have enough MP.

The bugs are weak to pierce and magic damage. A piercing weapon with magic damage is your best bet if you don't want to spend forever fighting them.

[Blinge]

Gonna bump my question:

You only have to kill one of them to progress.

use poison, or the baby's nail you might've picked up from 3-1

I assume you didn't beat the boss cause you'd be splurging about it.

Where do I get poison? Should I get the poison cloud, or are spells bought with demon's souls only one-time uses?

Have some patience, It's been less than 24 hours since you asked your question.

I think he means if you use a boss soul to buy/make a spell, is it used up? Answer: yes.

Mercury weapons have a random chance at inflicting poison, I wouldn't go out of your way to craft one, I think there's a mercury rapier somewhere in 3-1.

edit: doucheyness scaled down a bit.

[atheistgod1999]

Actually, ryu answered my question lol.

[Blinge]

Thank people for their contributions. That includes Ryu and myself, despite the fact that his advice may have misunderstood your question. If he hasn't then I did, and fair enough. Your question wasn't perfectly worded.

Why me? Well i gave you some information, whether you think you need it is irrelevant.

edit: doucheyness scaled down a bit.

[Immryr]

uhhh have you lost the plot blinge? you expect everyone should say thank you to you no matter what your contribution to a conversation is? even when it's just coming in, saying something condescending, and missing the point of a question?

well ok then

[Blinge]

uhhh have you lost the plot blinge?

...I think I might've, yes. Or my patience at least.

Pft, I told him an alternate source of poison to that spell, which is answering "where do I get poison"

[Ruldra]

@atheistgod1999: I hope you're not going out of your way to make a new weapon just to deal with those giant bugs. They're pretty much harmless and you'll have a much bigger threat to worry about shortly after them.

Alternatively, you can skip the entire 2-2 level by jumping down that hole in the beginning. It's a bit tricky but you can make it to the bottom safely.

PS: if you have the Purple Flame Shield, I suggest you take it with you.

[Ed Oscuro]

Played a bit more Ghosthunter and figured out my issue: The aspect ratio is locked in once you've started a game, so loading a savegame also loads the aspect ratio the game was started in when you made that savegame. With that in mind I kept going with the 16:9 save.

If the first cutscene is an accurate indication, 16:9 is simply hor+ for the game, with the vertical FOV remaining exactly the same. Pretty gud.

I don't like the game's combat though; the constant mashing triangle / circle to get to the shoot / first person modes is very awkward, and the first person targeting system looks like nothing so much as CyClones from 1993, and that's not a good thing. In other words, for combat you revert to a dumb shooting gallery minigame if you want to actually hit something. The default mapping of the weapon trigger to R1 is also pretty awkward; I think it makes more sense to have shooting triggers be the lower buttons.

Beyond that the game's got a lot going for it. I understand the US release actually fixed or improved a variety of issues. I had stuck with the PAL version because I heard that content was cut. I don't think the US version should change combat so dramatically as to make it more worthwhile, so perhaps I'll stick with the PAL version.

[atheistgod1999]

Thanks, guys. I was actually checking for a good piercing and magical damage weapon in storage (Grille's Stello or whatever isn't that good for normal use), and found that I had the Baby's Nail. I went back to 3-1 anyway to free that other guy and I found the Mercury Rapier +1. Didn't free the other guy, though.

[Mischief Maker]

Well Nvidia's new "No Man's Sky" optimized drivers came out and the developers themselves just released a patch today promising to make PC users very happy. I installed both...

...and the game no longer runs like shit!

It now runs like crap.

I'm done with No Man's Sky. I don't think Sean Murray is a liar. He's just an incredibly incompetent programmer.

[EmperorIng]

But like dude. 15 quintillion planets.

[NTSC-J]

Sean Murray did an interview this week addressing a number of issues people had with NMS. I have to admit, I admire his candor.

[Ruldra]

This is my favorite video regarding all the drama behind NMS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8P2CZg3sJQ

[atheistgod1999]

I'm honestly surprised that poorly-programmed, buggy games are even unexpected at this point.

[null1024]

been buzzing around, playing some rom hacks

Of particular note has been Sonic 1: The Next Level by MarkeyJester, which has a slick '90s house soundtrack [some of it is sampled PCM, really clear quality] and trippy art that reminds me a lot of the Vectorman games. It's really impressive in all aspects. Pretty much everything is custom. It's visibly based on the Sonic 1 codebase [and it's got a little of Sonic 1's slowdown here and there, particularly in Act 2], but Sonic has extremely smooth animations, all the enemies are new and well designed, it's just damn good.

Just one zone [3 acts] and a boss. Stage design is really great and enemy placement is pretty good and occasionally mean.
I did get a feeling of "barrenness" to the levels though, I dunno how to really describe it.
My biggest complaint is that the anti-grav gimmick in the first act is a bit of a chore in practice, although it was pretty cool when I first hit the switch. Otherwise, it's just damn impressive all around.

[Squire Grooktook]

This is my favorite video regarding all the drama behind NMS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8P2CZg3sJQ

I like this one.

It's the ending that gets me.

[iconoclast]

I like the release trailer, myself.

[Mischief Maker]

Those No Man's Sky revenge videos are misleading. I do believe that almost everything in the trailers did end up in the final game. In the time I was putting up with the stuttering, I did see beautiful and oddly-colored forest worlds, I did see brontosauri, I did see giant freighters being swarmed by pirate fighters, I did take part in dogfights that started in orbit and finished while skimming along the surface, I did see sandy desert planets with floating islands.

It's just the chance of finding all those things in a single system like in the E3 trailer is vanishingly small. I remember an interview where Sean Murray said they set up the algorithm to produce pretty and interesting planets in a 1:9 ratio with boring ones. Also, there's a definite linear path of unlocking types of buildings and encounters the closer you get to the center. I started four different games and every time I wasn't jumped by pirates until system 3 and didn't encounter freighter attacks until system 5.

From what I've seen, this is a game that expects some investment from the player before it gives you the goodies. And truth be told that might have been the right idea for this exploration game because there's great procedurally generated music wherever you go and if the engine ran smoothly I'd probably be willing to invest the time to play those odds.

But the engine doesn't run well, so I don't have that kind of patience for it. Like I said before, I don't think Sean Murray's a liar, he's just an incompetent programmer.

[Durandal]

Sean Murray appeared more like some stumbling goofball who accidentally kept promising more than he could do, as a result of Sony's inexplicable marketing push for this game, and ended up in the Upcoming Great Hall of Fame alongside legends such as Keiji Inafune, Tim Schafer and Peter Molyneux after releasing yet another overhyped unfinished product in a market of overhyped unfinished products where everyone has gotten sick of them. From the first trailer I saw at Sony's E3 press conferences, my original impression was that NMS was another one of THOSE games, with only style over substance to make up for it. From what little footage I saw in a gameplay stream, my suspicions were largely confirmed. Despite the EIGHTEEN QUINTILLION planets, there was still less to do than in Elite II released in 1993, or even the first Elite released in 1984 for the BBC Micro, as those game had no set goals for the player either, yet managed to still be more engaging by playing on those freedoms of doing whatever the hell you want.

The space sim genre is a largely explored one, and NMS still doesn't seem to stand out amongst its peers aside from excessively relying on random generation to feel fresh. But unlike the god-given miracle that is Dwarf Fortress, or The Binding of Isaac, there doesn't seem to be any meaningful emergent gameplay to take advantage of those unique scenarios. Instead the core gameplay loop seems to play out largely the same with minor variations here and there, without really utilizing those infinite scenarios. A more skilled programmer like David Braben could have fleshed out the technical side of things or allowed for more varied looking planets, but the problem still remains with the core design. Maybe I'm wrong as I have not played the game myself, so feel free to correct me.

I thought people would have learned to recognize these kind of man/wallet-eaters by now after being burned so many times, but it seems it'll take a volcano outburst before people learn to not trust trailers at face value just by a little bit. It really shows that all you need is something shiny and pretty with a sufficient marketing push to get people hyped. Whether Sony is to blame with tight deadlines and overhyping a game that would've still been in an abandoned corner of Steam Early Access otherwise, or Hello Games for not enforcing quality control and chewing more than they could bite will be left up to debate for future historians.

Another minor thing that incredibly irked me about this ordeal is this interview where Sean admits they were "perhaps naive" about releasing free content updates. It's not going back on their words that really irked me, but that word: naive. Naive, as in: "It's just not possible to work on $60 games in 2016 without releasing paid content. DLC is an inevitability, we can't do anything against it." Good god.

[Vludi]

Played a credit of Ghouls 'n Ghosts without expecting much and got a 1cc, feels good man.

New Zero Team- A beat-em-up from someone you'd be least likely to think of in the genre, Seibu. Surprisingly holds its own against Konami's entries in the genre and even some of Capcom's. You don't really find melee weapons, but there are some good throwables and rocket launchers out there.

What is the difference between "New" Zero Team, the regular one and all other revisions?

I'd like to see Capcom give M2 a shot at making a CPS-ified version with arcade difficulty (around 8 enemies at once on screen instead of 3)

That definitely would be interesting, I want a real Final Fight sequel . That being said the SNES version of Final Fight isn't easy, they balanced the 3 enemies on screen limitations with more damage, more agressive AI, more enemies, insta-spawn, and the bosses have a lot more invincibility frames, still crappy though.

[dunpeal2064]

I just finished up Metal Gear Rising and wrote up my thoughts on it. I stole Iconoclast's +/- system, since I'm bad at writing cohesively :V

Spoiler

+ Ripping spines out feels great. You'd think the same animation being repeated over and over would get dull, but its fast enough to not grate, and it has good impact.
+ The bosses were all very good, both in design and mechanics.
+ The story was actually really interesting. Its simple, and lacks the weirdness of usual MGS titles (They make up for it occasionally in other areas though), but it still gave me a bit of thought.
+ The Parry and Dodge mechanics, while simple to execute, are still engaging and require some focus. Parrying some of the larger attacks feels great.
+Stealth was done pretty well. Most opportunities arise outside of ranked fights, so you don't have to fight a timer to try to get sneaky.
+ VR Missions. I love these. Different objectives requiring different approaches and playstyles, all based on time, leading to optimizing routes and strategies. Going for 1st Rank on these is insanely fun.
+ Music, character design*, and action scenes were all very fun.

~ So many unlockables. This is good and bad in my book. I like having a reason to keep going, and having weapons and armor to try out in different runs, or for different Files. But holy shit, this game really went crazy with the amount of unlockables.
~ The pacing was weird. The first 4 Files all feel pretty even, if maybe a touch long. The last 4 Files, however, are rapid-fire, and feel like they all together are about as long as a single file from the first half of the game. Not a negative, because it still kinda works out, but it just felt weird.
~ The game is rather easy on defaults. Its still engaging enough to not get boring, but coming from stuff like DMC and Bayonetta (Let alone NG), it felt like I was unstoppable after learning how to Parry. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the game still contains challenges, and it could be chalked up to familiarity with the genre, but I can also see it being a turn off for some.

-The camera. Its too close to the character most of the time, and unless I completely missed it, there is no lock-on feature. Its at best tolerable, and at times is infuriating.
-Actual melee combat, while impressive-looking, is really shallow. I never found a need to learn combos, since every move chains into something. Things like knock-ups or gap closers were never necessary.
-No training mode. This, combined with the game not even telling you how to do new moves you unlock, just escalates the fairly lackluster melee combat. I have no need to learn them, and on top of that, learning them in itself is a pain.
- * Your base lackies were fucking awful. Cliche, with no personality, and yet they insist on talking to you constantly as if they mattered. It would have been passable if they didn't have more dialogue than any other characters in the game.


Overall, I really enjoyed this game, and I'm glad I went back and gave it another chance. I still don't think it quite holds up to the best of the genre, but it does offer enough of its own thing to warrant a spot on the shelf for any 3D Action lover.

Now time to dig into Devil's Third

[Harpuia]

Because of AM2R rekindling my love for the series, I've been on kind of a big Metroid kick lately. I already played through the two GBA titles prior to AM2R, so the first to go was Super Metroid. I'd beaten the game once before; this was several years ago on the Wii Virtual Console, before I realized how silly it was to buy games there when Nintendo's own emulators can't even compare to pretty much any unofficial one that's ever been released, not just on PC but on the Wii itself. Anyways, I think this is the first time Super Metroid really "clicked" with me. During my first playthrough, I remember getting lost a lot, not knowing where to go, and not enjoying the game as much as I did Zero Mission or Fusion.

Now though, I see why it's such a popular choice for favorite Metroid game. As long as you remember where you couldn't reach a certain spot due to not having the right item (this kinda goes for Metroidvania as a genre though), the progression is mostly easy to follow. The game also isn't as clunky as I used to think it was. I did use a romhack however; it's a neat little patch called Control freak. Basically, it changes the button configurations to be closer to the GBA titles. For example, aiming up or down is now accomplished with one button, the missiles or grapple are now used by holding a button, and the x-ray scope now has it's own button. It's a very handy hack and I'd recommend it to anyone playing Super, even for the first time.

Next up is the Prime Trilogy, starting with the first game. I think this one and Fusion were the first Metroid games I ever played way, way back. It holds up perfectly; it clicked with me the first time I played it, and I'd still rank it as one of my favorite games. I'm playing through it on Hypermode and I think I prefer it this way, since the combat is a lot more challenging and engaging, and it encourages you to look for more energy and missile expansions. I'm already nearing the end, and next up is Prime 2.

[BrianC]

Sean Murray appeared more like some stumbling goofball who accidentally kept promising more than he could do

I liked him on NCIS.

[atheistgod1999]

Back to Demon's Souls (want to finish it before I start my junior year of high school). I was fighting the humanoid dragon boss (can actually get there without having to kill a single enemy; just run past the big things before they attack and I guess you don't have to kill the fireball clown (but I do anyway due to him dropping 1-2 full moon grass and over 500 souls)) and had his health halfway depleted when my mom started talking to me through my door, and I had to tell her I was masturbating so she'd leave me alone ASAP due to no pause feature.

[Blinge]

and had his health halfway depleted when my mom started talking to me through my door, and I had to tell her I was masturbating so she'd leave me alone ASAP due to no pause feature.

[atheistgod1999]

and had his health halfway depleted when my mom started talking to me through my door, and I had to tell her I was masturbating so she'd leave me alone ASAP due to no pause feature.

"I'M MASTURBATING!" is a lot faster than "I can't pause this game and I'm in the middle of a hard boss fight and need to concentrate!", and is a better reason for her to leave me alone.

P.S.: In before trap15 tells me to stop posting.

[NTSC-J]

I actually thought it was your best post yet.