We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

Prime games are actually between Metroid and Metroid II last I checked, Super Metroid being a direct sequel to II.
Other M is then after Super Metroid and is the game directly before Fusion, which is the last game in the series.

no? Fusion is the last one chronologically, Primes are supposedly before Super Metroid, and Other M is directly linked to Fusion in that "commander Adam" or w/e his name is massive spoiler for anyone who hasn't played Fusion

E: misread the Other M thing but I did once see a canon timeline thingy and supposedly Prime games were somehow between Metroid II and Super Metroid...

Nice.

But yes, you're right. Fusion comes after Other M.

Samus calls her computer Adam after the dude from Other M within the first five minutes of the game, it's one of those things that is only a spoiler if you insist that it is because it resists casual scrutiny >_>
Too late for that now!

also trivia that made me laugh from metroid wiki:
"Metroid Prime Pinball is not a separate canon game in the Metroid storyline but actually retells the story of the original Metroid Prime in pinball format."

Except Odama was beyond amazing

also jacq might be right, I never played Return of samus
it is the only metroid I've never played

Except Odama was beyond amazing

Implying that Metroid Prime Pinball isn't awesome. Which it is.

but it was just pinball, wheras Odama was using a pinball as a WMD while ordering troops around

Pokémon Pinball was just pinball and it was awesome.

Speaking of metroid, I don't know if i'll ever be able to finish prime. My friend today asked me if he could borrow my memory card and I was going to say no since I haven't finished prime yet but its been so long since the last time I genuinely felt like playing it, the artifact quest completely ruined the game for me, so I said yes. I don't know if I should bother buying the sequel.

Pokémon Pinball was just pinball and it was awesome.

okay I concede on that front

Ed, all the Prime games have something like the Artifact quest, with 2 being the worst due to effing dark world. 3 is arguably both the cleanest and easiest; most people agree 1 was the best. *sigh* I regret selling my Prime Collection disk now... :<

either way, getting the sequel(s) is up to you; if you own a wii and can find a copy, Metroid Prime collection is the best option fo' sho

Aaaand now I’m done with Half-Life: Blue Shift. It was basically a glorified mod; fanfic quality writing, short, not different enough like Opposing Force was. Not worth saying much else, other than that I didn’t need any cheats on this one (partly the hardest enemy in the whole thing is an alien grunt, partly I’ve learned how to go around corners so that I can headshot the tough guys). Seeing as to how I lack a second player, I’m just going to watch Decay on YouTube; then I’m done with the first generation. Final thoughts to take away from the whole experience:

- Ow, my eardrums. There may be a little too much dynamic range for me. When you’re constantly going from quiet scientist voice acting to ridiculously loud ambient sounds to gunfire, you can’t be too sure when to use hearing protection.
- It would be for the best if video game characters would not speak in paragraphs.
- I got several moments of completely unintended horror thanks to playing on a somewhat glitchy trackpad; sometimes, the system would think I have MOUSE1 held down when I don’t. Outside of combat, this is just loud and startling (again, the quiet sounds are really quiet, and the loud sounds are really loud in this subseries). In combat, this is also frightening because after completely emptying the magazine at targets you weren’t aiming, you need to unstick the mouse, and this is a bit unintuitive to pull off in addition to being something like having your gun jam in a firefight.
- And as regards MOUSE2, whose brilliant idea was it to put a full auto setting on a security guard standard issue sidearm!? of course, I never used that; it was too inaccurate to kill things at any point I had the pistol out, and it’s definitely a horrible way to use ammo.
- UI rant up ahead: Scrolling on a trackpad doesn’t go a click at a time like lots of games expect, so it was impractical to switch weapons, then click. Rather, I hit the appropriate number key (however many times it took to get to the one I wanted), then hit enter. This is passable, but makes it very difficult to switch weapons in a hurry, and I ended up never doing it while enemies were active. Obviously this isn’t something that would have been reasonable to anticipate in 1998, but at least weapon selection there is a matter of taking your dandy time looking through weapons before you just pick one (the menu stays open however long it takes you to pick a weapon, which is bad if you change your mind or wander out into an ambush, but is good for thinking through it). I don’t consider that great usability, but it’s worse in HL2. You have to scroll through weapons and quickly pick the one you want by clicking (no enter key firing because only one key assignment is allowed per input—this is probably a bad thing), or the menu goes away. And the trackpad scroll is completely useless there; scrolling just a little bit makes the menu cycle really fast. I wish I knew UI well enough to address fixing things. Apparently you can make a job out of that.

I honestly didn't find the dark world mechanic compelling at all and that made it my lest favourite of the three, and I didn't really enjoy the artefact quest either, but I still love the trilogy in general.

I know this is probably childish or something but I like sort of bright colours and full spectra in art design and the usual cliché lava world/ice world/plant world stuff of Prime appealed to me a lot where the light vs dark design in Echoes just never hit it off with me enough to finish the game, despite it probably being a lot better artistically.

Aaaand now I’m done with Half-Life: Blue Shift. It was basically a glorified mod; fanfic quality writing, short, not different enough like Opposing Force was. Not worth saying much else, other than that I didn’t need any cheats on this one (partly the hardest enemy in the whole thing is an alien grunt, partly I’ve learned how to go around corners so that I can headshot the tough guys). Seeing as to how I lack a second player, I’m just going to watch Decay on YouTube; then I’m done with the first generation. Final thoughts to take away from the whole experience:

- Ow, my eardrums. There may be a little too much dynamic range for me. When you’re constantly going from quiet scientist voice acting to ridiculously loud ambient sounds to gunfire, you can’t be too sure when to use hearing protection.
- It would be for the best if video game characters would not speak in paragraphs.

If you didn't know Opposing Force and Blue Shift weren't actually produced by Valve, they were fan produced and then Valve liked them so much they distributed them.

That’s not quite accurate. Gearbox was founded by fans, sure, but they were experienced game developers, mostly ex-employees of a company that was shut down because they were developing a game that (probably) couldn’t compete with Half-Life; they ran Opposing Force by Valve, who thought it sounded cool and told them to pitch it to Sierra, who thought it sounded cool. Opposing Force was “produced”, so to speak, under the traditional publisher–developer model. They did such a bang-up job that they got to do more add-ons and the console ports.

how do you even get the unicorn costume, i could only find one part

how do you even get the unicorn costume, i could only find one part

The parts are out of the way, requiring you to check blind spots, reach places that look a bit unreachable, and stuff like that.

SpoilerShow

For instance, you have to break the railing on upper floors of the mall to fall into the right place at one point (or two? I forget now).

I'm pretty sure that's the one I found :c

meanwhile, during the xbone announcement

I tried Stacking, i expected it to be really talky and story driven but, there's really nothing exceptionally interesting about the exposition and the game is barely there. You're literally on rails the whole time, or at least there is a rail to follow at all times, a light that points you where to go like Dead Space, it's handholding to the extreme.

Maybe a bad choice to start my virgin Double Fine discovery adventure, guess i'll try Psychonauts next.

Wow that is extremely shitty, so... looks like the Wii U is the best next gen console? The least worse?

At least there's still the Steam Box?

Ugh yeah looks like my console war alignment is back to Nintendo. I guess I'll try them all out, but I'm honestly kind of getting tired of this whole multi-entertainment thing. I'm sure the XB1 will be VERY expensive and not worth it to replace essentially my entire electronic layout with a probably shittier version of everything.

In fact, I might have to declare this the end of the line for new consoles, and I can just go back and play some older games/consoles that I've missed out on, like the PlayStation library.

e: Also, video game market dropping in profits? Just how is that possible, and what does that mean for the future of gaming?

e: Also, video game market dropping in profits? Just how is that possible, and what does that mean for the future of gaming?

I doubt it's anything catastrophic unless I missed a lot - mainly that console sales would be dropping (because the generation's over and the early start hasn't yet gotten a good foothold), combined with increasing awareness of the Triple-A business model being unsustainable (profits aren't just sales, keep in mind, so profits might be dropping sheerly from poor budget decisions).

I did not know this.

I always thought you had to collect 30 fruits that matched your Yoshi's color, like each Yoshi had a favourite fruit and you had to collect 30 of them. I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to be but i always did that.

Ugh yeah looks like my console war alignment is back to Nintendo.

In fact, I might have to declare this the end of the line for new consoles

Both of these seem really presumptuous to declare at this point. I really don't think the fee is going to kill the used game market, and even if it does, console gaming did well before the rise of Gamestop and eBay, and back then the new game price was considerably higher when factoring in inflation.

And some of the details make me think it's not even as bad as people hear. If I'm reading right, games can be installed somewhere else for free if they've been uninstalled from the first profile, meaning you can give them to your friends or trade them in without needing anyone to pay the fee, which was put in more to account for installation of games than to murder the used market.