We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

Good thing mega evolutions are entirely optional I guess. Maybe if I don't use them at all, I'll forget they're even there! Hahahahahaha...

A theory I like that I think makes sense in the current Nintendoland is that MegaEvolutions are just 100% "I, an eight year old, can not do this, i have play coins, let me use them to make my pokemon AMAZINGTASTIC." It and Poke-Aime seem like features that will not have an effect on competitive play, which I do feel that Game Freak respects somewhat???

Then again im also a big sappy child so I might be missing something via SHEER NAIVETY.

I actually bought the Mega Collection twice because my first copy was stolen years ago. And I think I lost my second copy so the only thing keeping me from replacing it is unemployment + emulators :L

in the meanwhile, the number of people who will be having dinner with keiji inafune is now 3

in the meanwhile, the number of people who will be having dinner with keiji inafune is now 3

I can't help but feel like the kind of person who spends that much money on a single kickstarter is almost guaranteed to be the kind of person who is not be able to make great small talk in general, much less with the guy who was lead designer on a favorite franchise of theirs.

All I can imagine is them just sort of sweating and staring at their food, too terrified to even look up.

That's a bit of an odd and hurtful generalisation to make of affluent people you've never met

Or maybe he's right but they were actually trying to have dinner with Kaiju Inefine

yeah, there's a one dollar less option to get some exclusive loots instead, which other people have opted for

I'm sorry guys the only thing I can think of when I see the pokemon Mega evolutions is just literally "MY POKEMON JUST DIGIMAVOLVED"

I mean

look at it
it's digivolution
they've finally done it they went there

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I would like counter-nominate the above as the best gif.

You guys why did Capcom keep making Mega Man X games after X4. X4 is fantastic and everything that followed is poop. Louke:



This stage is awesome. It has a lot of variety and is pretty well designed. Every 30 seconds or so there is some new challenge to overcome. The rotating spiral staircase effect looks pretty choppy, but to be fair, that would have been super hard to animate at that resolution. It gets the job done.

I love the miniboss. It's a perfect execution of "simulated danger" in a game, where it looks super dangerous, but if you know what to do you will be ok. The difference with this and more recent games that rely on QTEs is that you can actually die at any moment (in one hit). It's just not as severely dangerous as it initially appears.

Now look at this shit.



To begin with, the first part of the stage is an absolutely shameless copy of Knight Man's stage from 6. What I can't even believe is not only did they also completely copy the spiral staircase from Split Mushroom's stage, look at how ridiculously wrong the perspective is. Are you kidding me? I get that side scrollers are 3/4ths views that don't strictly make sense, but that is just absurd. It's like they didn't even try. None of the stages even bother with parallax backgrounds like X4 did. It's so phoned in.

And that is to say nothing of Tidal Makkoeen's stage, which is effortlessly the dullest, most uncreative stage in Mega Man history. I defy you to name one that is worse.

Also Mattrex is literally Magma Dragoon. I get that there are a lot of similar elements repeated throughout the series but I'm a little less forgiving for making a carbon copy of a boss from the IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING INSTALLMENT.

What happened?? It seems that they were made by almost completely different teams, and that Inafune had next to no involvement. Capcom apparently had no interest in treating the intended series finale with any sort of respect since they wrung that stone for all the blood it was worth.

Not so sure Capcom aggressively nosediving is a semi-recent development anymore you guys.

also I can tell you exactly why Capcom kept making X games after x4

the answer is:

X5 was supposed to be the end of the X series.
flat-out. I don't understand what's with the terrible stage design in it, but when zero got his body blown up and shit at the end, that was supposed to be the chronological jump to MMZ.

MMZ1 was supposed to start the new series of megaman focusing on zero, who wakes up after being suspended in the same torso-only state for some few centuries or so. that's why he looks that way at the start of MMZ.

but people wanted more megaman x! and so capcom said fuck your story inafune and made X6 and fucked both series, so MMZ2 had to retcon some shit

honestly MMZ5 isn't as bad as the 3 after it. I'd rather play 5 than 6 any day.

and yeah it's 6 that's considered the worst in the series because it's full of bugs.

it's the only game in the series where you can straight up trap yourself in a no-way out part of a level and have to lose all your lives and game over to get out.

some examples of the impossible obstacles:

the leap of faith in Gate's Stage 2. have fun with that

You can get stuck in any of the nightmare areas if you're not careful. literally any.
I've done it, it's a bitch
basically what happens is if you go to the stages in the wrong order, you get screwed because you're missing an item you need

normally you can go to any stage and get through it. not X6.

at least you don't almost need the shadow armor like you need the gaea armor from x5 but... bleh

Did you know that the Ameircan version of Mario Bros 2 is not the same as the Japanese one?!

I kid i kid

Ah Christ on a Christ this looks super lovely. I'm really looking forward to this.

My favourite part of Kameo was just dicking around as a fairy while flying around, so this intrigues me.

Not related to currently discussed video games, but Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs just came out and I would like to place them on trial for Videogame Heresy and Being a Bad Sequel to a Good Game.
(note: I have not bought this game and currently am not willing to give money to it. My evidence consists of reports from a member of my vidjagame peanut gallery who played it yesterday.)

lasts about 3 hours
lantern is infinite
and you can stare at the monsters without going insane

Wut
See, Amnesia wasn't scary because it was scary
It was scary because of the insanity and the dwindling oil and the slowly growing oppressive atmosphere
If you take out the pressure the game puts on you, and the time it takes to grow spooky, what's left?

jump scares only

Oh, I see

this is way easier than amnesia
no more physics puzzles
only interaction ones
that only exist in one room

So there's a difference between "streamlining" and "amputating vital parts"
And I am not sure that The Chinese Room understand it
Amnesia was not an excessively complicated game; it was just complicated enough to let you feel clever about moving forwards
This shit was not Antichamber and dumbing it down just kills the other half of the gameplay
Starting to sound like a worthy sequel to Dear Esther tho #zing #sickburns

turns out
that apparently to understand the story
you need to check the journal every time you enter a new room

What no what nonono
Capital videogame heresy
They should teach you in every game design class ever that you need to show the players your story instead of making them look for it
Even Dear Esther cared enough to tell me the story instead of making me go to a menu
I lost 5 points of faith in humanity when I read this

btw, sorry for being ranty
I don't care all that much about the fact that bad games exist, but when someone makes a bad entry in a great franchise it feels like betrayal.

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At first I was like "Okay, these cinematics are nice but let's see some of the actual game" then I realized that was the actual game

Definitely gonna have to look into this

“You see, we’re all family. It’s a game-sharing cl—a cult. We’re a cult.”

Ah, a bit like Stan’s jacket.

Unrelated:

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Hm, looks like I’ve got something to test out next time I boot Winders.

I'm loving the Shantae Kickstarter. They just revealed that ggdg is drawing the game's backgrounds (even though I kind of already knew that because I spent a disproportionate amount of time reading her twitter). They've also started redrawing official art to make Shantae less pale. Plus, I really dig the corny theme tune. (They say we live in the darkness/They say there's trouble ahead/Every day, there's sorrow/Today, tomorrow/But I'm dancing instead!)

Looks like my university's network is doing something weird, since I'm unable to connect to servers in TF2. No fixes are working, but it went away after a few days last time this happened. ; -;

Guess this is a sign to get started on my backlog!

So I've been playing a browser game called The Ways of History. It's a real time MMO strategy game with heavy influence from games like Civilization. Similar to civilization, you collect resources over time, improve your cities, settle new cities, and colonize resources. The two main differences between civilization are that there are no computer players, the game is entirely multiplayer, and that instead of being measured in turns, it's real time and measured in hours. This leads to the game being a lot more long term (I started playing in february, a bit late from the start of the server, and nobody's won yet), and because of the long-term nature of the game, some very interesting political situations come up. I highly recommend it for anybody who has the patience for civilization, and especially a game that's slower than civilization. It doesn't take up too much of your time, just about 5 minutes per log in while you set some buildings to build and whatnot.

If you want to play, follow this link, if you complete all the tutorial quests then I get some luck coins (the cheaty currency of the game that people can pay real money for)

I have discovered the joys of ghosting vaults. I only did one and a half in this run but I have the taste for it now and...I gotta have more man. I NEED MORE.

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So I've been playing a browser game called The Ways of History. It's a real time MMO strategy game with heavy influence from games like Civilization. Similar to civilization, you collect resources over time, improve your cities, settle new cities, and colonize resources. The two main differences between civilization are that there are no computer players, the game is entirely multiplayer, and that instead of being measured in turns, it's real time and measured in hours. This leads to the game being a lot more long term (I started playing in february, a bit late from the start of the server, and nobody's won yet), and because of the long-term nature of the game, some very interesting political situations come up. I highly recommend it for anybody who has the patience for civilization, and especially a game that's slower than civilization. It doesn't take up too much of your time, just about 5 minutes per log in while you set some buildings to build and whatnot.

If you want to play, follow this link, if you complete all the tutorial quests then I get some luck coins (the cheaty currency of the game that people can pay real money for)

This sounds really interesting. I love Civ and the real-time nature is an intriguing concept. Not only would it force you to think long-term and ponder decisions, but it would prevent me from binging like I do with Civ haha. I think I'll check this out.

Okay, I've been playing Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and I'm...let's see...



Alright, three hours in.

Observations so far:

• You can't pick up every gosh darned thing anymore, not really a downside though due to the changed nature of the puzzles (see below).
  
• The Half Life 2-esque physics puzzles of "pile a bunch of objects on this seesaw" and the Monkey Island style inventory recombination riddles have been replaced with "find the objects you need in this level and carry them to where they need to go," which sounds a lot worse than it actually is. It's easily figured out while in game and actually results in situations that feel a lot less contrived than some of those in the first game.
  
• No inventory to speak of (or at least, none that show up three hours in). This works nicely with the reworked puzzle mechanics.
  
• The lantern behaves more like a flashlight and doesn't use fuel - it does, however, flicker a LOT, to the point where I'm not sure how much of its misbehaving is scripted and how much of it is general tone-setting.
  
• Looking at monsters doesn't make your vision go all wonky, which is just fine, because they generally don't sit still long enough for you to get a good look at them anyway, and tighter corridors and closer spaces mean you need to actually see where their silhouettes are sometimes in order to sneak around them.
  
• The story is looking interesting at the moment - the main character's motivations are extremely simple ("gotta find my kids"), which he repeats in almost every journal entry (a new one will pop up when you enter most rooms, as the game helpfully informs you early on), but the actual big deets are dispensed in the same way they were in The Dark Descent; that is, through notes found around the levels. They're pretty interesting ones, too, although that might just be the mechanic in me speaking.
  
• Level design is a lot tighter, and the general quality of the visuals is better too. Some areas are large and let you meander about freely while others clamp you down tightly, but they're a nice mix and both of them are enjoyable and play their parts nicely.
  

Or you could just go with my roommate's declaration of, "dude, this game is spooky."

Either way, I'm enjoying it, at least so far.

Unrelated and a bit snippy:

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Dear Esther purposefully eschewed gameplay because it was a narrative experiment about delivering a disjointed narrative with randomized snippets of a story. Of course it cared enough to tell you the story - the game was the story.

Also unrelated but not snippy: Ways of History looks pretty cool! I'm giving it a shot, enjoy your coin...thingies!

I like to say mean things about Dear Esther because I had a uniquely and specially awful experience with it. I know that it was experimental but I'm still holding it against The Chinese Room forever.
When I played DE, I kept getting stuck on small obstructions, not being able to find good angles to look at things, and most of all going the wrong way and backtracking. I believe I did so much backtracking (at a movespeed that you immediately realize is painfully slow when you want to use it to go somewhere instead of sightsee) that it may have taken me an extra half hour. It was less fun than it could have been.
"All story no gameplay" would be a cool experimental art game, but I don't think intentionally eschewing all the unique aspects of video games as a medium (e.g. experiences created by user choice rather than moving straight down a linear path) turned out very interesting. I would have had much more fun with Dear Esther the randomized short film.

Actually, the reason I stated that was because you were criticizing Dear Esther for not having gameplay, which was basically the equivalent of making an offensive joke and then elbowing the person it would offend while going "eh, eh, eh?" while waggling your eyebrows.

That is, instead of being witty or clever, it just made you look like you didn't actually know what you were talking about.

Hold your unique experience against the devs if you like, but I'll still stick it to you for trying to joke about how bad it is by insisting it's a terrible example of a genre it doesn't belong to.

Although I'm surprised you took offense to that and not my pointing out that your massive condemnation of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (a game you both admitted to and then bragged about having not played) was almost...no, actually, entirely incorrect.

Of course, maybe your friend just didn't like it and so gave you a tinted explanation of how it was. This is an assumption, but if he finished it in three hours, the reason was probably that he was trying to speedrun it two days after release.

Awesome :D You guys have likely spawned on continent 3, I have an account there, post your usernames and I'll see if I can help you out!